albert camus

"Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? It is for the sake of everyone in the world that the slave asserts himself when he comes to the conclusion that a command has infringed on something in him which does not belong to him alone, but which is common ground where all men—even the man who insults and oppresses him-have a natural community."

albert camus - the rebel

my first week of being a philosophy major, i insanely took both history of analytic and phenomenology and existentialism, with the former immediately preceding the latter on tuesdays and thursdays.

not a good idea.

while i thoroughly enjoyed both classes (taught by dennis and shannon, respectively), as i was much more analytically aligned at the time, i had some difficulty grasping the continental realm of philosophy. heidegger pretty much made me want to rip my hair out. how is it with the nothing? HOW 'BOUT YOU SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FACE YOU STINKING NAZI!!!!

i wasn't sure if i was going to make it through the latter course... that is until i discovered existentialism. "now what is existentialism?" some of you ask. just wiki it, i don't have the talent nor the means to go into it. while i really enjoyed jean-paul sartre and simone de beauvoir, it was albert camus that really dragged me in. since reading the rebel in that class, i have devoured most of his writings, both the fiction and the philosophical. for a quick taste of his existential fiction, i suggest reading "the adulterous woman" in his exile and the kingdom. for a feast, read his the stranger and the plague, both of which are classics among philosophical fiction.

so why do i write about camus tonight? i'm not quite sure. for some reason last night i was sending my buddy jack some fight club quotes and decided to throw in a camus quote at the end. this turned into me sending a bunch of friends random camus quotes. and that turned into writing this post.

kickball league

the first rule of kickball is you don't talk about kick ball.

the second rule of kickball is that it's actually okay and preferrable that you talk about kickball.

the third rule is no bouncies unless they are requested.

the fourth rule is bunts must go past the pitchers mound.

the fifth rule is that four fouls make an out.

and finally, the sixth rule is that if this is your first night at kickball, you have to kick.

and on the seventh day, god played kickball.

tonight i played kickball for the first time since sixth grade. it was awesomely fun and we beat... no we desimated.... the opposing team 18-3. if any of you are in the provo area and want to participate, let me know.

introducing photo mayhem

to compliment my normal blog, project mayhem, i decided to begin photo mayhem, a daily (or so) look at the world as i see it. enjoy.


photo mayhem

"we just had a near-life experience"

"what will you wish you'd done before you died?" - tyler durden.

today in between work and borders (where i spend a few hours each day studying for the gre), i sat down with some corn hips, pepper jack cheese, fresh salsa, and a random chapter from fight club (the movie, not the book).

the random chapter happened to included the car crash scene, which got me thinking a bit. for you who haven't seen fight club (first of all, shame on you), here is a little synopsis of the scene. the narrator (my namesake) gets in a car with tyler durden (the anti-commercialist anarchist - and my former namesake), along with a couple spacemonkeys (members of tyler's anarchist organization, project mayhem - my blog's namesake). a little bit into the drive, tyler let's go of the steering wheel, allowing the car to swerve aimlessly in traffic, and places everyone in the car into mortal danger. tyler then asks, "what will you wish you had done before you died?"

this is how the book describes the scene (tyler is replaced with 'the mechanic'):

another car, and the mechanic screams, "we are all going to die, someday."
this time, the oncoming car swerves, but the mechanic swerves back into its path. the car swerves, and the mechanic mathces it, head on, again.
you melt and swell at that moment. for that moment, nothing matters. look up at the stars and you're gone. not your luggage. nothing matters. not your bad breath. the windows are dark outside and the horns are blaring around you. the headlights are flashing high and low and high in your face, and you will never have to go to work again, low and high in your face, and you will never have to go to work again.
you will never have to get another haircut.
"quick," the mechanic says.
the car swerves again, and the mechanic swerves back into its path.
"what," he says, "what will you wish you'd done before you died?"
with the oncoming car screaming its horn and the mechanic so cool he even looks away to look at me beside him in the front seat, and he says, "ten seconds to impact.
"nine.
"in eight.
"seven.
"in six."
my job, i say. i wish i'd quit my job.
the scream goes by as the car swerves and the mechanic doesn't swerve to hit it.
more lights are coming at us just ahead, and the mechanic turns to the three space monkeys in the back seat. "hey, space monkeys," he says, "you see how the game's played. fess up now or we're all dead."
. . .
"what will you wish you'd done before you died?" the mechanic says and swerves us into a path of a truck coming head-on. . . .
"make your wish, quick," he says to the rearview mirror where the three space monkeys are sitting in the back seat. "we've got five seconds to oblivion.
"one," he says.
"two."
the truck is everything in front of us, blinding and roaring.
"three."
"ride a horse," comes from the back seat.
"build a house," comes another voice
"get a tattoo."

so the question that i ask myself and all of you is "what will you wish you had done before you died?"

is there something to do? something to discover? something to destroy? something to fix? something to tell someone? someone to save? someone to leave? . . .

can there be a modern day samuel the lamanite? (and would he be shot off the wall?)

"and it came to pass that in this year there was one samuel, a lamanite, came into the land of zarahemla, and began to preach unto the people." - helaman 13:2

something that has been of interest to me as i read the scriptures has been the prevalence of non-ecclesiastical prophets - prophets called of god that had no apparent role in the governing leadership of the church (or organization of believers). in fact, most prophets in the scriptures fit this very model. this was one of the reasons why they were so rejected by their own. they had no identifiable authority, just regular joes (and janes) called to prophecy and cry repentance.

samuel the lamanite seems to also fit this model. during his ministry, it seems that it was nephi, the son of helaman, that was the priesthood authority over the church at that time. it was nephi who god had given the sealing authority to (helaman 10:7) and it was nephi who baptized those who believed samuel's words (helaman 16:1,5). nephi was also the curator of the nephite sacred relics (3 nephi 1:2) .furthermore, while most of the nephites did not like what nephi had to say (and a few tried to imprison him (helaman 10:14-5)), he did not seem to get the violent rejection that samuel received.

so what about samuel? we know very little of him, other than that he was called of god, visited by an angel, and climbed a wall to preach against the nephites - those who were supposed to be the church of god. he wasn't preaching to the gentiles. rather, he was preaching against the saints of his day. furthermore, there is no indication that he had any ecclesiastical authority over the nephites. he made no appeal to priesthood authority, his only claim to authority were his own revelations and experiences.

and of course, like most of the ancient (and early-latter-day) prophets, his message of repentance was primarily centered around the nephites accumulation of wealth and neglect of the poor.

so my question today is can there be a modern day samuel the lamanite? (and would he be shot off the wall?). is there room in the church today for the scriptural model of prophets? can prophets of god exist outside of the priesthood hierarchical chain? can other's receive and preach revelations for the church and for the world who are not the presiding authority of the melchizedek priesthood? or is this an outdated model that god has replaced with a hierarchical model tied to the presiding priesthood authority (a model that at times seems to conflict with d&c 121:39-41).

and if such prophets were still possible today, how would they be received? would those who are supposed to be the saints of god give heed to their words, or would they, like the 'righteous' nephites, try to shoot them of their walls with the a priori judgement that they are not prophets of god?

and finally, what would the modern day wall around zarahemla be? must a latter-day samuel preach to the saints from the walls of temple square, or are books, blogs, journals, the internet, and other venues ample walls for extra-ecclesiastical revelators?

turning over a new leaf

i decided i am going to make my posts nicer and cleaner (which would hopefully reflect my real-world self as well). what are my motivations you might ask? first, after reading my last post ashley said "oh man loyd" and then went silent. her unintentional silent treatment made me feel guilty, which subsequently made me feel bad. second, i was sitting in church today and thinking about samuel the lamanite and the possibilty of non-ecclesiastical prophets in the church today. but then i realized that my previous posts may be ruining the possibility of others taking my thoughts seriously. have i ruined my mormon street cred? finally, when i got home from church, there was an email waiting for me from my dad. he basically answered the last question for me. he was right on.

so yeah, i'm going to be less ribald from now on.


*i was considering removing some of the previous posts, but as this (meaning the blogspot blog, not the myspace blog) is somewhat of a documentary history of myself, i'm leaving them as is.

**6/11/07 for professional reasons, i decided to remove my last few posts...

scouting

i never got my tenderfoot. i could have gotten my life badge, but i never cared to go to one of those board of reviews. if i recall correctly, the scouting badges went tenderfoot, second class, first class, star, life, and then eagle. if you do anything special after that, the president invites you to washington d.c. to shake your hand or something. from what i've been told, being an eagle scout used to mean something special. this was back when my dad was a kid and kurt russell was whitey, a renegade scout leading his troop against the u.s. military in the disney classic follow me boys. now being an eagle scout means sitting in "the eagle's nest" as a newly inducted eagle realizes he has also just wasted too many hours of his life. if you are real lucky, you get invited into the order of the arrow. it's a secret boy scout club (like al qaida). they make you think that they are sneaking off during summer camp to plant trees and eat oranges. in reality, they are dressing up as indians, giving eachother secret names, using secret handshakes, and making secret oaths to not divulge the great secret - that they had just wasted a lot of time dressing up as indians.

for me, scouting wasn't about handshakes, mottos, badges, and helping old ladies cross the street (if you're an old lady who can't cross the street by yourself, it's time for you do just die). scouting wasn't about learning skills, developing morals, or transforming ourselves into stalwart citizens. scouting was about camping, burning things, and swearing.

oh yeah, and it was also about farting.

camping. this was what scouting was really all about. camping was where burning things, swearing, and farting could go on without the condemning eyes of our parents - parents who believed we were out becoming productive young adults. whether it was the quick one-nighter or the week-long summer camp (managed by a bunch of 16 yr old rejects), camping pretty much followed the same protocol:

-get to the camp site.
-hurry up and fill your tent with friends before you are forced to house russell (he would crap his pants).
-set up tent and begin swearing
-taunt friends who discovered they have an opening for russell.
-start a fire
-begin throwing things into the fire
-dinner (usually chilli)
-throw other things into the fire
-sit around the fire, swearing, telling dirty jokes, and fart
-go to our tents
-play some poker
-swear, talk about girls, and fart.
-eventually fall asleep
-wake up way too early
-start a fire
-throw things into the fire
-breakfast (usually french toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs mixed with cheese)
-realize you have the runs
-be scared to fart because of the runs
-go back to sleep
-lunch (usually some kind of sandwhich)

if it was a one nighter, we would then burn whatever garbage/wood/dead animals/food we had left, and then pee on the fire to put it out, all the while joking and swearing about the stench. if it was more than one night, we would then just repeat the process.

burning things. fire is a scouts best friend. while we were happy to burn anything that was flammable (and still throw in everything that wasn't), a favorite tradition of ours was the burning of russell's underpants.

as i already mentioned, russell crapped his pants. i don't know why he did. nobody really knew. he did it on camps. he did it at school. he did it at church. if there were pants on him, he would crap in them. on one of the first camp outs i can remember, a few of my friends who were stuck with him discovered that their tent stunk worse than the latrines. after some investigation, they discovered a soiled pair of whitey tighties in russell's bag.

when i say 'soiled', i am not referring to a stain or streak. i'm not talking about a smudge. i mean to say that there was a log of poop in those briefs. a log. and not just any log, this was a friggin yule log. in germany some parents would have mistakingly hid their kids' toys in this thing. it was huge.

and of course, it stunk... it was poop afterall.

i wasn't there when they made the discovery. rather, i was by the fire with some friends when i heard a swearing storm heading my direction. dangling from the end of a stick, was a pair of white briefs with the aforementioned log attached. after it was dropped into the fire, we immediately began throwin as many logs (the wooden kind) we could find to incinerate that thing.

and thus began the traditional burning of russell's underpants. sometimes they would be boxers. other times, briefs. but without a doubt, there would always be a log in his unmentionables and a bunch of swearing scouts burning the thing.

swearing. when i was sixteen, a bunch of us decided we weren't going stop swearing. in an effort to achieve this goal, a few of us made a pact to punch eachother for swearing. a simple pact: if you swear you get punched.

the problem was that getting punched hurts. getting hurt makes you swear. swearing gets you punched again. (you can see where this is going). to make it even worse, when a friend punches you it doesn't matter what kind of pact you made, you're going to punch them back. this in turn angers them, causing pain, swearing, and more punches.

needless to say, we decided to drop the pact and just swear when it seemed fit. no point in getting hurt if the utility of pain fails.

farting. it's just fun and funny. and yes, if you put a match to your anus and fart, it will ignite. just be careful not to burn a hole in your shorts.


somewhere in scouting i learned to tie a few knots, but i have since forgotten. the whole knots thing is just a front, a cover and excuse for us to be boys and do what boys do best - camp, burn things, swear, and fart.