reason #192

all old people are ultra-bipolar.

example -

old guy comes into the store. plaid shirt, dockers, and a sad comb-over. he's picking up a 'special order' for his son. problem #1 - we don't do special orders. problem #2 - nobody has heard of this supposed special order. problem #3 - he's not even sure what was ordered. so what does the old man do? like any other old fart, he starts yelling, blaming everyone and everything. tells everybody they are stupid. just being a normal grumpy old person. we finally find someone who knows a little bit about this mysterious special order who heads off to find his things (turned out to be something put on hold).

suddenly, the old guy is mister smiley - all interested in about where i am from, what i'm studying in school, how i got into philosophy, and how it is all somehow related to his days in the airforce.

from grumpy to happy in 2 seconds.

reason #183 why i don't like old people

people say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. that's a lie. i taught my aging black lab to roll over. my golden retriever learned to play dead. then she learned to play it too well. old dogs can learn new tricks.

the truth is, you can't teach old people anything. they're too old, too grumpy, and too stuck in their ways. technology, culture, manners, fashion, hygiene, whatever.

case in point - debit cards.

this is the year 2005. yeah, a long time after you old grumpy people were born. yet, still you old farts pull out your checkbooks to pay for every little thing you buy. from a pack of denture-safe chewing gum to a one piece jumper, you pay for it with a check.

checks take too long for normal people, but for older grumpy people it takes forever. they write so slowly that they always forget what they are paying for, where they are at, and how much the amount was supposed to be - twice. then in the likely case that they forgot their i.d., they get all pissed off that the cashier won't take their check. if they had remembered their drivers license (which they shouldn't have in the first place - see reason #17 why i don't like old people), they struggle with all of their might to rip the check from the book, all the while complaining about how checkbooks are made these days.

there is a very simple answer to all of this. euthanasia.

but that won't happen, so there is another simple answer. debit cards - simple, quick, and all they would have to remember is a four-digit pin.

but that won't happen either. as i said earlier, you can't teach old people new anything. instead, we all have to suffer.







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i realized that besides my day in drag, i have not posted (or even taken) any new photos lately. i need to get out and take some. any requests?

crazy me

my brother, sister-in-law, and nephews came over tonight to wish me a happy b-day and bring me a present (thanks for the shirt). according to nancy, some assorted family and friends have stumbled upon this place and think i'm one messed up kid.

maybe i am. maybe i'm not. i haven't even dropped the bomb yet either.

it was kinda funny though, cuz i was talking with someone just the other night about my sight and wondering what some of my family members thought of it. perhaps some cousins are banned from reading it. am i still the same person they knew me as, or has this changed their whole perception.




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things have been going pretty good for me lately. had a wonderful time with someone last night - found a tasty vegetarian restaurant in salt lake and saw a hilarious play. i should have moved to salt lake and just commuted to school. it's different up there, in a good way. feel more at home.

:)

turned out to be a happy birthday afterall.

happy(?) birthday to me

well, i'm 26 years old now. nothing special. rather uneventful. was supposed to go camping tonight, but the floods and memorial crowds took that fun away.

so yeah, here i am another year older.

on the brightside, got a date tonight (or tomorrow night- depending on how you look at things) with someone pretty and pretty special.

reason #168 why i don't like old people

he came in dressed like all the others: pin-striped dress shirt, suspenders, and slacks pulled up to his chest. his wife broke their recently purchased camera and didn't want to take responsibility for it. (the thing wasn't even really broken, it was still fully functional. she just broke a clip on the battery.)

like most electronic stores, we replace defective items, not customer abuse. if you are too old and stupid to change a battery, then find a 3 year old to do it for you.

i didn't tell him that. just told him that we could not replace it and that he would need to contact the manufacturer for options on repair. like all old grumpy people, he began yelling and swearing - loud enough for people across the store to hear every bull and every sh**. he then told me he was going to "get gephardt." yeah, that gephardt. the guy who wants to help everyone shirk their responsibility onto someone else by shoving a camera in someone's face.

seriously, who (besides old grumpy people) actually says that they are going to "get gephardt"?



go home old people. stop being so crabby all the time. just because your lives are so miserable doesn't mean you have to make it that way for everyone else.

another book...

i am such a nerd.



today was part one of my next amazon delivery day. though i wanted to begin with albert camus' the stranger, his the myth of sisyphus and other essays arrived earlier, so i'll be beginning with that instead. camus has got to be one of my favorite existentialists alongside sartre and beauvoir.

i finished the contortionist's handbook this afternoon. though it doesn't have much plot, clevenger does an absolutely fabulous job getting you into the mind of his main character.

untitled and uneven thoughts... and more new books

i wanted to get out of work and get back to my apartment until i did.

my place was hot. really hot. not the hotness of opening an oven filled with breads, pies, or other yummies, but the hotness of opening a sun-baked aluminum tool shed. not only was it hot, the air-conditioning apparently doesn’t work either. never a good combination. i guess we were going to find that out that eventually. luckily, i discovered it on a friday night. this way it won’t be working until at least monday.

to make things even more lame, my apartment was empty. again. i’m usually a solitary person. i enjoy being on my own. but like mowing the lawn, cleaning, or any chore, it’s much more enjoyable when done willfully. joe has been away on some stake-out or family vacation the last week and bobby has pretty much been other than here. in total, my apartment’s been inhabited by two conscious beings for maybe an hour or so this last week.

too hot to read or relax. too empty to enjoy it otherwise. i had to get out. i didn’t really feel like doing anything, but i couldn’t stay and do nothing, so i did what anyone in my situation would do – i headed to borders, picked up a couple books (20% off with e-mailed coupon), and drove up the canyon.

the recent rains and spring run-off have really made the mountains beautiful. not quite the green of hawaii or the coasts, but much better than the green of happy valley. the flooding river brought with it a cool breeze and an ambient resonance that far surpasses the sounds of engines and rubber on asphalt. if there were a heaven, it would be a mountain canyon continuously at dusk. i read until the sun had long set and my eyes hurt from straining at the printed pages.

i’m back now. it’s still hot – forcing me onto the balcony with my laptop. it’s still empty – forcing me to put my thoughts into print. but it’s relaxing now. i guess i just needed a little getting away to get back into sync.

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for certain reasons only some of you may know, i’m going to put quinn’s mormon hierarchy aside for a while. in its place i’ve got evil: a primer, by william hart. it’s a philosophical look at the notion of evil over the last several thousand years.

for kicks, i’ve also added real ultimate power: the official ninja book, which is an outgrowth of the real ultimate power website – which is awesome. and by awesome, i mean totally sweet. so sweet that i want to crap my pants.

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finally, now that i’ve got more time on my hand, i’ve noticed that this site has gotten a bit more personal – though cryptic at times. i remember someone complained when i stopped talking about my personal life on here. we’ll see how it goes. i refuse to talk about relationships again though. that never ends up good.

oh yeah... new book

i forgot to mention that i began a new novel earlier this week - the contortionist's handbook by craig clevenger. i'm about halfway through it already and have really enjoyed it so far. clevenger's writing style really gets you into the character, a genius of sorts who is constantly changing his identity to avoid his past.

and for your boredom...

i had thought that the other two papers i had written this last semester were going to be terrible, but apparently they both got a's and were really good according to my professors. so here they are if you get bored...

longino’s community of science and the power structures of community is a terrible title. building off the the argument of helen longino (a feminist philosopher) that science must be understood as a community project, i argue that scientific truth is not objective, but is controlled and determined by power structures within the scientific community.

in leibniz’ problem of determinism and human freedom (another title using my latest trend of conjoining two thoughts with a conjunction), i argue that g.w. leibniz fails to free his discourse on metaphysics from its implications of determinism.









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on a related note, i finally met up with my philosophy of science professor to find out why i got a b-. it turns out that if i had finished all of my busy work and turned in my final paper on time that i would have gotten at least an a-. so technically it is my fault, but still....

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on another slightly related note, i had gone almost a week without energy drinks, but last night i drank a sobe adrenaline to keep me awake at a club with some friends late last night. it kept me up much later than that as well. it still tasted like dog piss. now i'm all sorts of tired.

five dollars

i'm not quite sure what her sign said. perhaps it was...

old, lazy crack-whore. in desperate need a line of coke. any help would be appreciated.

or maybe...

just spent last dime on blue-rasberry vodka. almost sober. please help.

or perhaps it was something that was supposed to make me tear up and want to help. i don't know what it said.

there is always somebody at the corner. an aging veteran missing his hand. a dusty single mother with three kids seeking for a bus ticket. a skinny, tanned thirty-smothing complete with sleeping bag and scruffy mutt. it's probably a con. a scam. a silly way to make some cash. to buy a tv, make care payments, a shot of heroine...

but maybe they need help. maybe they're a product of their environment who needs some support to finally bust out. each time i pass them, i react. sometimes i'm mad for just passing them up. sometimes i check my wallet to only find receipts - i don't think they take plastic. sometimes i purposely try to pretend i didn't notice them - not to convince them, but an act to convince myself.

i couldn't pass up this time. i spun around and pulled out the only five i had. i never saw the sign. i don't know what she needed, but she smiled graciously as she took it.

perhaps she has enough to get her fix. maybe she's got enough to buy the furniture set she wanted. maybe she's gotten enough to pay for a ride away from her abusive husband. i don't know what she needed. even if i had read the sign, i may never know. i just know it made my day a little brighter.

five dollars. enough to buy a garden salad, medium fries, and small drink at wendy's. fourth the cost of a new dvd. a meal at bajio. a couple gallons of gas. it's not much, but it did something for me today.

i feel like i've rid much of a pretty big burden off my shoulders. feeling a lot better now. stil got plenty of sorting out to do, but feeling good about it.

thanks to those of you who helped out.

santa claus

when i was younger i used to believe in santa claus. my parents told me he was real. presents showed up on christmas day. why shouldn't i believe in the jolly old fella. as i got older, the notion of santa became harder and harder to accept. i had to recreate him, give him even more super powers. santa had to overcome all the doubts that i was having of him. i wanted to believe in him.

i found presents from "santa" in my parents closet. yet for some reason i still wanted to believe. i forced myself to believe. i told others i believed. deep inside, i knew he was a fraud. i held on though, i tried to bury my doubts.

one christmas eve, when i was 9, i had to pee really bad. i mean really bad. if i didn't release some pressure, there would have been an explosion of urine across my room. taking the risk of being seen by santa and scaring him away with my presents, i crept up the stairs and turned the corner toward the bathroom. there, in the family room, were my parents hanging up presents. santa's presents.

there is no santa claus.

i could no longer believe. there was no forcing it anymore. there was no turning back. sure, i could fake it still, i could pretend everything was ok. i had to make those around me happy. however, doing so was just a lie.

i just don't think i can pretend anymore.

well, i finally came out of the closet today (not that closet - i'm still straight). it's something i've struggled with over the past year or so and it finally came rumbling through my mind into some sense. i needed to tell someone, to be authentic about my life. luckily, i've got a great friend that i was able to relate it to, who i knew would understand me.

i feel somewhat lost and disoriented right now. i want someone to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be alright, but it's that want that drives those who can help me away. i don't know how to reconcile everything still. i feel like a huge chunk has been turned upside down in my life. at the same time i feel like a burden has been partially lifted. i guess this will just take some time to sort out.

blood

though the title may seem gruesome, this is not another dark cynical post. it's a brief glimpse at some good in the world.

every couple months or so, my ringing cell phone shows the same phone number: something, dash, four, zero, zero zero. it's the red cross. they're keeping tabs and i'm fresh to squeeze.

though the needle is as thick as my small finger, i don't feel it going in. call me sick, but i oddly enjoy watching it done. maybe it's a safety precaution. by watching what's going on, i'm making sure the needle is going in the right place. don't want to turn around and feel it digging into the side of my neck or some other unwanted place. the real pain is the small prick they make on the end of one of your fingers to test your iron levels. that quick stab that seems to always connect with bone. after, that it's smooth sailing.

when asked why i regulary donate, i usually says its for the juice, fig newtons, and shortbread cookies. sometimes i'll joke that i need it in case i'm driving home from donating, get slammed by a drunk driver, and need it pumped right back into me. other time's i'll play patriotic everyman hero and say, "i'm just doing my part."

the real reason is the people there.

from the sweet old lady at the reception desk, to the assistants, to all the fellow donors, it's a nice break from the world i seem to face at work every day. nobody is complaining about how they should not have to take responsibility for their own actions. nobody is crying to get what they want. nobody is yelling about how the rules don't apply to them. instead, it's just ordinary people. senior women. middle aged men. college students. mothers. uncles. just people like you and me. each of them doing their part. they could be elsewhere. there are plenty of more exciting things to to then fill a bag with your body fluids. but they are there, giving. thinking of others. acting unselfish.

yes, there is some good in the world. little things. little beautiful things that remind us how wonderful this place and people can be.

life through death

rewind four years to september 11th 2001. admit it. you know what i am talking about. the pentagon is still smoking. the two towers are a crumbled mess. you were waiting. not just waiting. deep down you were hoping for something else. another plane to crash. a building to blow up. another terrorist attack. you listened to the radio in search for more excitement. you turned to the news for info on the next hundred or so dead people. admit it, the higher number of deaths, the more exciting your life had become.

that’s what we are. we are all members of this demented club we call the human race.

rewind two more years. head west to littleton colorado. dylan klebold and eric harris have just killed their classmates and teachers. you were shocked. you may have cried. yet, you found it somewhat exciting. admit it. you liked it. for a while, deep down, you wanted it to happen somewhere else. to give you something to talk about. so you could sit in the break room at work, or in the halls of whatever building you were in, at the dinner table, wherever. you wanted it to happen again.

each death gives us a reason to wake up in the morning. we hate it. we want it to stop. we are disgusted by it. we go to bed and pray that it will end. we wake up and want it to happen again.

now fast forward a few years. fall two-thousand-two. head back east – a handful of miles away from the shadows of the simmering pentagon. john muhammad and john malvo have shot someone. they have shot someone else again. a mother. an elderly man. a child. old. young. black. white. ordinary people like you and mean. once again, just like the previous year, you are listening to the radio. you are tuning in to cnn. who will die next. when will someone die. on the outside you are saying you want it to stop. admit it. on the inside, you are excited. you want the numbers to rise. you are waiting, not out of fear – out of hope. with each death, you have new life. you find it exciting. admit it. you know what i’m talking about.

fast forward. rewind. play it back again and again. put in slow-motion to make it last. every school shooting. every mass murder. every earthquake. every train-wreck. plane crash. the higher the numbers, the more exciting our lives suddenly become. when a pair of new york times reporters discovered that the 9/11 deaths were double than the actual figure. we were angered. how dare they take away our deaths? how dare they take away our excitement.

rewind to last christmas. now fast forward one day. a tsunami has hit a large section of asia. at first it was just a little exciting. admit it. you know what i’m talking about. the first numbers were a little fun. something to mention during sunday’s dinner. 16,000 dead. the next day it got even better. you were shocked, saddened, and even deeply touched by all that happened. inside you wanted bigger numbers. you got your wish, but you wanted even more. you know what i’m talking about. each day the number doubled. each day you had something even better to discuss. you woke up each morning and the first thing you did was check out the latest death toll. once again, you had a reason to get up in the morning. it’s the same with every tragedy. ever mass destruction. you go to bed praying for it to end. you woke up hoping for more. just to wet your lips, they told you disease would later trump the initial figures. you may have donated money and supplies to the efforts, you showed that you wanted the dying to end. inside, you hoped malaria and dysentery and typhoid and cholera would give us something more to talk about.

all this gives us life. gives us hope. hope for more death. this is why we watch the news. we want pictures and images. we look away at first, then we look. and we look again. people jumping out of a plane wrecked skyscraper. bodies bulldozed into mass graves. body bags. blood. frightened children. it’s not necessarily the images, but the hope for the images. the hope for something exciting. something new.

this is why you like movies with mass deaths. independence day. armageddon. return of the king. kingdom of heaven. each of these movies playing out our hopes and dreams. a lot of dead people. none of them you. it’s as old as the bible. just look at noah’s ark. soddom and gomorrah. moses and his plagues. each day the egyptians and israelites had something to be excited for. what would happen next? blood. frogs. locusts. hail. a new plague for a new day. a break from the monotony

if it wasn’t for death and destruction, we wouldn’t have the news. nobody cares about the little happy stories. nobody tunes in to see some kid who won a spelling bee. we tune in to find the latest death tolls. we want to know how much destruction has been caused. we tune in to find out when we can tune in for more of it.

all of us. members of this funny little twisted club. this club we call the human race. a club of vampires – thriving and growing from each dying number.

admit it. you feel this same way. each death brings you a new life. a reason to get up in the morning. you know what i’m talking about. living a life through death.




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in other somewhat related news, i finished chuch palahniuk's haunted. this novel has to be the most sick, demented, and twisted thing i have ever read. however, just like the deaths above. i couldn't pull myself away. i tell myself i want to quit reading. that i don't want it to get any worse. i then flip the page and begin te next chapter... hoping to be shocked even more.

i think i need something a little more uplifting for my next novel.

thirteen steps.

the first step to recovery is realizing that you have a problem. the second step is… well, right now i don’t care what the other dozen steps are…

this isn’t about what you think it is. there are no syringes here. no glass bottles. no razor blades. no rubber straps. no i.d. has been required. no lighters. no paraphernalia. no forged signatures and no plastic bottles. nothing has been stolen. nobody has been hurt.

you may read this thinking it’s nothing. you are probably right. you may read this thinking i’m insane. right again. you may want to stop right here. you probably should.

you didn’t stop. you are still reading.

what this tale involves is a lot of procrastinating. a lot of late nights. and a lot of a white bitter chemical. what it lacks is an ending. a point. it lacks what any tale has. it lacks a hero. it lacks a villain. it lacks what makes any story exciting - violence and sex. what it does have is me. it has me and a lot of late nights and a lot of caffeine.

eventually it has to begin. in order for it to finally end, it has to begin. the first night begins with a coke. a simple coke. some cola to keep company through the night. the night begins with a coke and some soup. philosophy soup. a porridge of assorted ideas and names. with each dip into my mind, the soup twirls around. kant. daly. symbols. descartes. monads. handmaids. noumena. phenomena. longino. social structures. power structures. gender. science. popper. hume. women. men. god the mother. representations. dora. paradigms. sex. leibniz. locke. berkley. mormonism. atwood. blacks. slavery. irigaray. cosmological ideas. prolegomena. antimonies. metaphysics. speculums. antigone. analytic. synthetic. a priori. freud. levi-strauss. economy. use-value…

it’s nine at night and the soup is a jumbled mess. another coke.
it’s eleven at night and still a mess in my mind. another coke.
midnight comes and at least i’ve got a name on the title page. i’m tired. walmart has rockstars on sale in four-packs.

they all taste the same. rockstars. sockos. full throttles. adrenalines. no fears. amps. eyes. monsters. the same energy drink, different labels. the same bitter taste. the bitter taste of caffeine and ephedrine. it’s the same taste you’d get nibbling and sucking on a dog’s floppy ear. you’ve never done it, but you can imagine how it would be. now imagine selling that taste in tall aluminum cans. imagine canning that taste, slapping a flaming name on it.

now imagine drinking a dogs ear to stay awake.

it’s one in the morning. i’m drinking a dogs ear in order to keep my eyes open. it works. i’m not alert, but i’m not asleep either. i’m tired, but i’m wide awake. suddenly, as if i’ve gained some super power, i begin to type. page after page flow from my fingers. the philosophy soup in my mind is just as incoherent, but it’s seeping through my hands and appearing on the screen.

suddenly it’s four in the morning. time to sleep. i turn off the lights and lie down. i think of my paper. i think of the class. i think of the pretty girl i have recently met. i think of the paper some more. i think of the blinking light on my stereo. of the cars driving outside. of some dog barking. of the way my blanket feels on my bare feet. how my pillow is too lumpy. my paper some more. the next semester. i think of how badly i need sleep. i think of the lyrics to some song. i think of asking out that girl again. i think of the next paper. i think of the philosophy soup. i’m tired, but i can’t sleep. i think of how tired i am. i think of thinking. i think of the paper again…

suddenly my alarm is going off. i haven’t slept. it’s seven in the morning and i have to get the first of several papers finished.

open up and drink another can of sweetened dog’s ear.

at twenty-four hours without sleep, your senses being to shut down. the first to go is your hearing. sounds begin to muffle. it’s that feeling of a change in altitude, but plugging your nose and gently blowing will do you nothing. next the vision goes. first, it’s tunnel vision. your peripheral vision fades to black. all you see is what is directly in front of you. next goes your depth perception. three-dimensional things go flat. two-dimensional drawings and pictures jump out at you. finally, you see stars. little dots swirling around you. they appear and fade randomly. in the muffled silence, little stars dance around the letters jumping out of your monitor. who needs captain neo or spy kids when this can happen in the comfort of your own room. captain neo is just a child molestor anyways.

what sticks around is your sense of taste. it sticks around and gets stronger. the bitter dog-ear taste of caffeine turns gets stronger. the bitter tast of caffeine turns to dog piss.

in order to finish that paper, i sip some more sweetened dog piss.

like magic, the words fly from my fingertips and appear on the screen. another page is finished. and another. and another. the paper is finished. time for a shower. time for another can.

i drink dog piss to keep alert through the last day of class. i drink dog piss to make it through work. i drink dog piss to turn philosophy soup into another paper the next night.

lather, rinse. repeat. night after night after night. eventually there is an end. that’s why i began in the first place – to get to the end.

now it’s over, but the dog piss continues.

when you drink a lot of dog piss, you begin to like it. you begin to crave it. you become thirsty, but water won’t do. you’re hungry, but no food will ever fill the need. dog piss to start off the day. dog piss to wash down a salad. dog piss to… no reason, just because. because without dog piss, i’m tired. i’m lost. nervous. cranky. you name it.

the first step to recovery is realizing you have a problem. the second step is… well, right now i don’t care.

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there are alternatives to dog piss. but as my t-shirt says, “i can’t i’m mormon.” i’ve become the legalistic ugliness i despise. instead of dog piss i could savor the source of the sweet aroma i encounter at barnes and noble, at borders, in the break room, and in the halls. afterall, the ban is only the phallic response to emma’s whining about having to wipe tobacco spit of her kitchen floor. but i don’t need to find an alternative. i can quit at any time. i don’t have a problem.

the first step to recovery is realizing you have a problem. well… i'm doing just fine

amazon delivery day!

just like christmas, but without all that giving crap - it's amazon delivery day!



ripping open the brown wrapping, i found chuck palahniuk's new novel, haunted as well as d. michael quinn's mormon hierarchy: origins of power. thus begins my summer of reading.





ok, that's not really where it begins, i celebrated the end of the last semester by reading palahniuk's previous book, stranger than fiction, which was a collection of non-fiction essays he had written between his novels. some of them were rather boring, however others were brilliantly written, illustrating the morbid reality of his and all of our world.





since my last book update, i also read (for school) women and authority edited by maxine hanks, the handmaid's tale by margaret atwood, bell hook' aint i a woman, hume's an enquiry concerning human understand, leibniz' discourse on metaphysics, and descartes' prolegomena (again).

mayrose

i woke up this morning, and for some reason i was thinking about mayrose...

i met mayrose in the pauoa valley during the first week of my mission. she was old, obese, and depressed. the combination of these, along with a pair of weak knees made it difficult for her to leave her home. two years previous to my meeting her, mayrose lost her husband. he must have meant the world to her, because she just hadn’t recovered from losing him. i don’t know how long the missionaries had been meeting with her, probably not too long.

mayrose wouldn’t let us teach her the discussions. not ready, she’d tell us. i doubted she ever would be. each wednesday we’d visit her. we’d read a few verses from the book of mormon, and what seemed like a couple hours later, my companion and i would leave sipping from a couple cold cans of juice through bending plastic straws.

like i said, mayrose was depressed. this made it difficult for her to read. very difficult. she told that after her husband died, she struggled with reading. it's not that she went illiterate suddenly, she could read the words, could string them into sentences, they just didn’t make much sense to her. magazines, books, newspapers, nothing made much sense. that’s why it would take forever just to read a few verses with her. we’d have to go line by line, word by word. she’d eventually say she understood, but i think she was lying.

each week we would go. each week she would not understood. each week we’d leave with cans of juice and bending straws. i’m not sure why we kept going. maybe we felt sorry for her. maybe we felt there was some hope. maybe we saw her as a surrogate grandmother. maybe we just liked sipping free juice from plastic bending straws.

after three months, my companion got transferred and i got a new one. following our second visit with mayrose, he thought it was a waste of time and wanted to bail. i’m not sure why, but i wanted to keep visiting her. maybe it really was the juice and bendy straws. we prayed about it and decided to give it one last shot. instead of reading random thoughtful verses with her, we’d ask her to begin reading the book of mormon from the beginning. first nephi, chapter one, verse one. the place where we all begin our failed ventures to read the whole thing. we stopping by one morning, read the first few verses with her, asked her to try to read the next chapter before our next visit which we set for a couple days later. she agreed to give it a try and gave us some juice and those wonderful bending plastic straws.

two days later we went back to visit mayrose to see how far she was able to get through the first chapter.

“how did the reading go?”

“wonderful. i finally understand why they call jesus the lamb of god.”

ok. time out. something wasn’t right. ‘lamb of god’ isn’t in the first chapter. it’s not until the eighth or so chapter. it turns out that mayrose didn’t just read and comprehend the first chapter, she read the first dozen or so chapters… and almost understood every bit of it. needless to say, my companion and i were floored. we discussed those chapters and asked her to keep reading and that we’d stop by the next day to discuss them. she gave us some juice and straws... this time though, i could care less that they bended.

our next visit was quite the same, she read another seven or so chapters. after discussing them with her, mayrose told us that she wanted to take the lessons. she had a bright smile on her face.

we taught her the first and second lessons. she said she wanted to get baptized, but wasn’t ready for it. she prayed for the first time with us. every visit was wonderful. i don’t remember if we got juices and those meaningless plastic straws. i couldn’t have cared less.

we taught mayrose the third discussion. mayrose said she wanted to come to church. her knees were terrible, and being overweight didn’t help her at all. she didn’t care though. she’d walk if she had to. she constantly smiled and was excited with everything we had taught her.

after the fourth discussion, mayrose told us of a reoccurring dream that she has been having since the death of her husband. in the dream her husband and other deceased family members are on one side of the mountains. she is on the other. they are calling out to her and want her to come see them, to be united with them. the only way to them is through the mountain, but she doesn’t know how to get through. mayrose smiled at us and said, now i know what the mountain is and how to get through.

my companion and i got home beaming with joy. what an incredible time. that night the mission called. i got transferred two days later…

for a month i had no idea what had ever happened with mayrose. finally, i got our mission news letter. on the list of named of people who had been baptized, there was her name. i was so excited that i jumped up, threw my fist into the air, and got it slammed by the ceiling fan. it hurt and left a nice bruise, but i didn’t care.

i later heard that following her baptism, mayrose went to the laie temple to do baptisms for the dead. i haven’t heard anything of her sense.

i wonder if she still gives missionaries those bending plastic straws.

nothing....

well, my two papers failed to get any real responses. perhaps they both needed a brief synopsis. the first deals with mary daly's feminist criticism of god as god the father and it's appilicability in mormonism. the second deals with sexist language and power structures in mormon culture. so now go read them below and let me know what you think.


schools out. i finished with 4 a's and a b-. the latter was in phil of science. i'm not exactly sure how it got so low. my professor was even surprised when i told her what she gave me, but she e-mailed me back saying it was correct. hopefully, i'll be able to meet with her tomorrow and find out what happened.

i was going to take a course this first block in the summer, but she is one of the professors, and i really don't care to deal with her again (last summer she gave me a b in metaphysics - my two lowest grades have come from her).

so today, i have no work, no school, no church, no homework, no studying i have to do. nothin.

nothing.

what am i supposed to do? i haven't been in this situation for a long time.