Stallion Cornell's Moist Blog

My six-year old boys are on a basketball team. The Sandy City Parks and Recreation department has christened the team the Suns, after the Phoenix Suns, which sent one of the twins into a paroxysm of rage.

“I want to be the BYU Cougars!” he shrieked, yet they’re still the Suns. The universe is a harsh, unforgiving place.

In order to accommodate six-year old basketball players, the standards have to be lowered by about four feet, but that’s still not low enough to overcome the 80% Principle: Approximately 80% of all shots only get about 80% of the way to the actual basket. Of remaining shots that are high enough to go in, about 80% of them don’t.

I think when they start playing competitive games, they could win with a score of 2-0.

The highlight of practices is watching them learn to dribble. One of the boys dribbles two or three times, stops, takes three or four steps, and then obligatorily dribbles a few more times before flailing the ball futilely into the ether. My other boy dribbles too hard, and pretty soon the ball is bouncing two feet above his head, and he’s straining to reach the top of it and get it back under control. Both he and the ball proceed in what is vaguely the same direction, but usually the ball gets there long before he does.

If you think there’s a problem with the fact that no one calls traveling in the NBA, you should see what happens in these VERY minor leagues. I don’t know why they actually learn dribbling, because it seems to be optional. And double dribbling is quite an accomplishment in a game where quadruple or quintuple dribbling are the norm. In a scrimmage, one kid ripped the ball away from another kid and started tearing down the court with his hand outstretched like a linebacker who had just recovered a fumble.

Even the most basic rules come into question. “What do we do after someone makes a basket?” the coach asked. Nobody knew the right answer. “Who’s ever seen a basketball game on TV?” Lots of hands went up. “On TV, what do they do with the ball after they score a basket?” My son was the first to answer. “They kick it!” he said.

Note to self: Watch more basketball with my son on TV.

It’s a lot of fun to watch my boys expand their horizons, especially since I wasn’t much of an athlete myself back in the day. (The preceding sentence demonstrates my considerable talent for understatement.) The sad thing is that, at 6’4”, I might have been a decent ballplayer if I’d applied myself. My two sons are below the 50th percentile in height – it’s their 5’2” mother’s influence, I’m afraid. Their spirit is willing, but their flesh is too short.

They’d probably be pretty good at chess, though. That is, until they start kicking things.

That means "The Pescados" in Spanish.

Now I'm up to Post #102!

OK, first 100 posts. Close enough.

This is Post #101.

I should have made a big deal about post #100, but I’m focusing on this one because it’s the beginning of the next 100. (Also, I didn’t notice that the last one was #100 until today, but that’s a less dramatic reason, so I’m improvising.)

Although this blog began in late August, Google Analytics has only been tracking visitors since September 15. However, that’s been long enough to get a good sense of who’s visiting this blog from where and how often. (As for why, that’s between you and your therapist.)

Over the past 89 days, this blog has been visited 4,318 times – an average of about 48 unique visits per day. That’s a different statistic from the much higher number “hits,” which is recorded every time anyone – including me – visits a web page. Visits are recorded when a unique IP address spends any time on the site, and Analytics discounts any of my own visits when I’m logged into Google. That means that 48 times per day, on average, one of you pulls up my blog to see what nonsense I’ve written recently. The stats say you view between two and three pages every visit and spend about six and a half minutes here.

Those are six and a half minutes you can never have back again.

For those of you who think all these visits came from my immediate family and/or Foodleking, who is essentially the same thing, think again. Only 17.5% of the total visits come from my home state of Utah, and the percentages are even lower for my parent's/siblings'/Foodleking’s home states – California (11%), Arizona (10%), and Virginia (3%). So a solid majority of you readers are people I’ve never met.

Case in point: Apparently, I’m a big hit in Massachusetts, which is just below Utah in terms of site visits. I’ve never been to Massachusetts, and while I do have relatives there, I doubt they would read this blog without medicating themselves heavily first. I’ve got readers in Ohio, Idaho, Wisconsin, and a healthy contingent from the Chicago Ridge area in Illinois. (Hi, Languatron!) In fact, I’ve had visits from every state in the union and the District of Columbia, except, inexplicably, the state of North Dakota, where I’m pretty sure they don’t have the Internet yet. (Don’t get all offended – I know you’re not in North Dakota, so let it go.)

However, U.S. traffic only accounts for 91% of my site visit totals. 3.5% of all visits come from the UK; 3.25% from Canada, and then a scattered handful of visits from Australia, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Switzerland, India, Spain, France, Turkey, The Phillipines, New Zealand, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, The Sudan, The Czech Republic, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, Poland, Israel, China, Gibraltar, Denmark, and Hungary.

I can only assume that most people stumble across this blog by mistake.

This site received the most visits – 110 - on Wednesday, October 24 right after I put up A Very Manly Post, which was actually pretty stupid. The site had its smallest day – 19 visits – on Saturday, October 6, right after my Aargh! Languatron Invades Real Life! post, which I thought was better than it was. Most people visit the main page when they come, but the five pages that have gotten the most accumulated hits over time are, from most to least:

The Lost Art of the Crank Call
Preserving a Teacher’s Right to Suck
Languatron’s Book: A Review
Holiday Euphemisms
The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen

A Very Manly Post doesn’t show up until number 11. And, to spite Nigel Tufnel, my list doesn’t go to 11. But my total posts now go to 101.

I’ll keep going if you will. In fact, I’ll probably keep going even if you won’t. Someday, North Dakota is going to get the Internet, and I need to be ready for them.

Finished Christmas cards today. We're sending out a picture along with a form letter that gives everyone the update as to what's going on. Many readers of this blog will be receiving said letter within the next couple of days. But for those of you who won't, because I don't know your name or address, here's an expurgated version suitable for public consumption. (The names have been changed to protect the flatulent.)

_________________

December 2007

Dear Friends,

We invite you to review the photo that came with this letter. Behind the wheel of the train you’ll find Mrs. Cornell, without whom this family would get absolutely nowhere. She somehow juggles the responsibilities of full-time motherhood with per diem work as a physical therapist, service as a Sunday School teacher, and all the responsibilities of coordinating the elementary school book fair. She sleeps occasionally, but not often.

Directly above her on the roof of the train is Cornelius, a six-year-old Reflections Award-winning author for his magnum opus Worm Man II: Fox Man Returns, in which superhero Worm Man befriends longtime nemesis Fox Man and both jump on a trampoline together. Cornelius enjoys soccer, basketball, and losing teeth.

Just to the left is Cornelius' elder-brother-by-two-minutes Corbin, who, while still in first grade, has already begun preparations to play quarterback for Brigham Young University beginning in 2022. He’s convinced that his red blankie will survive the intervening decades, but the prognosis is not good. Corbin likes his waffles hot and his hair spiky.

Next to Corbin on the ground, you’ll find Stallion, who now has a job renting vacation condos on the island of Kauai. He lost the goatee, though, because it was starting to itch.

Stallion is holding his two-year-old son Stalliondo, who no longer sleeps in a crib and has taken to crawling into bed with Mom and Dad so he can kick them in the head. His vocabulary continues to grow, as do his feet.

At the front of the train is eldest daughter Cleta, the world’s only ten-year-old teenager. She is an accomplished pianist, a voracious reader, and a surprisingly experienced babysitter with diaper-changing skills of girls twice her age. She also knows everything there is to know about American history and/or Calvin and Hobbes.

Next to Cleta is eight-year-old Chloe, a fine pianist in her own right, as well as an artist, writer, photographer, soccer player, and American Girl Doll enthusiast. Last spring, she appeared in a ballet production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, wherein she danced divinely and tried – and failed – to resist the temptation to wave at her parents.

Hope all is well with you – we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Three FM radio stations - 106.5, 100.3, and 97.5 - have been playing Christmas music in the Salt Lake City market since the day after Halloween. Both major Salt Lake newspapers have been filled with letters to the editor screeching "It's too soon! It's too soon!" To those secular Scrooges, I say "bah, humbug."

Or, in a more 21st Century vernacular, "Up yours."

Granted, Halloween is too soon for seasonal Wal-Mart ads, but it's never too soon to hear Christmas carols. When I was an actor in the Playmill Theatre in 1993, we had Christmas in Yellowstone on the 25th of August, in commemoration of a year when the Old Faithful Inn was snowed in right there at the end of the summer. We drank hot cider, exchanged gifts, and sang "Silent Night." When I ran my own theatre in Jackson Hole, we did the same thing every year. It was good stuff. And it was the music that made all the difference.

Christmas music never gets old.

Of the three radio stations who play Christmas music, I try to avoid 106.5, because even though I have yet to hear them spin a single Kwanzaa tune, they insist on using the phrase "Have a happy holiday" as an insipid jingle. Not even the despised "Happy Holidays," which could, theoretically, include New Year's. Nope. Just "Have a happy holiday."

Which holiday, guys? Festivus? Would it friggin' KILL you to say the word "Christmas?"

100.3 says Happy Holidays, too, but, to their credit, they always refer to themselves as "your Christmas music station." The genericism of Happy Holidays gets offset by using the word Christmas in close proximity. Somewhat.

97.5 is the only station that uses the words "Merry Christmas" in all of their promotions, which is why I press their button on my radio first. I think more and more businesses have noticed that there are financial consequences attached to treating the word "Christmas" like a sign of leprosy. In Target the other day, the "Happy Holidays" banner was right next to the "Merry Christmas" banner. In previous years, "Happy Holidays" stood alone.

I think the backlash against the anti-Christmas PC Nazis is finally starting to kick in, and that's a good thing.

Christmas is all about tradition, and those traditions are reinforced by timeless music. That's why very new Christmas songs survive from year to year, although "Mary, Did You Know?" and "Breath of Heaven" seem to be hanging in there. They're not "Silent Night" or "O Little Town of Bethlehem," though. (Every time I hear "O Little Town of Bethlehem," I think of a beautiful, Dickensian English village coated in lightly falling snow,with a lamplight burning on the end of a deserted street. This image is not geographically, meteorologically or theologically sound, but it's dang Christmasy.)

Singers would do well to remember that when they sing Christmas tunes, the song is the star, not them. Hearing Celine Dione butcher "O Holy Night" with self-important bombast makes me want to drop a bowling ball on my head. Donny Osmond's "poppy" Christmas album is equally wretched - no one really wants to Donny do a techno version of "Angels We Have Heard On High," do they? I think that's why Harry Connick, Jr.'s first Christmas album is so beloved - he sings it straight, and it's filled with traditional arrangements that would have been right at home alongside Nat King Cole, AKA the Honorary Voice of Christmas. (Connick's second album, where he pushes the jazz elements too far, is forgettable at best and, more often than not, just plain unlistenable.)

It's hard to make any hard and fast rules about good Christmas music, though. Mannheim Steamroller is always great precisely because they break with tradition. They play with different tempos, styles, and arrangements, but you always know they respect the songs, so you're willing to go along for the ride. Whereas the Mormon Tabernacle Choir approaches every song with such a sterile reverence that listening to them becomes really dull really fast.

Everyone has their own favorites, I suppose. For me, I'll always have a soft spot for Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town," because, even though it's probably crap, it makes me feel 16 again. Also, I hate "My Grown-Up Christmas Wish," because it sounds like it was written by the Democratic National Committee. Yet I love John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" for reasons I can't explain. I mean, it's a political carol co-sung by Yoko, so I should loathe it, but I don't. Whereas Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" sounds like a tire commercial.

And what's up with Wham!'s "Last Christmas?" Why do stations keep playing it?

"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart

But the very next day, you gave it away."

To who? The Salvation Army? Goodwill? Deseret Industries? What is this crap?

The best modern Christmas song, hands down, is Spinal Tap's "Christmas with the Devil."

The elves are dressed in leather and the angels are in chains (Christmas with the Devil)

The sugar plums are rancid and the stockings are in flames (Christmas with the Devil)

There's a demon in my belly and a gremlin in my brain

There's someone up the chimney hole and Satan is his name

106.5 hasn't played this once. And don't tell me it's because it's offensive. After all, they play Wham!'s "Last Christmas" every fifteen minutes.

I wore my Christmas tie to church today.

It’s an innocuous little black number with miniature Santas all over it, but it was more than enough to embarrass my ten-year-old daughter, who prematurely entered a teenage state of mind a decade or so early.

“It’s not even December yet!” she huffed. “Why do you have to be such a geek?”

“’Tis the season to be jolly!” I geeked back. “Don we now our gay apparel!”

“It’s gay, all right,” she said. (I walked right into that one.)

I don’t want to have my rugged masculinity called back into question, but it’s slightly sad that the word “gay” has now lost its original, nonsexual meaning entirely. Nobody has the guts to change the words to “Deck the Halls,” but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has purged all usage of the word from its hymns and children’s songs. Hymn 276, “When the Rosy Light of Morning,” used to contain this line:

“Fresh from slumber we awaken;  Sunshine makes the heart so gay.”

The New, Orwellian hymnbooks now read:

“Fresh from slumber we awaken;  Sunshine chases clouds away.”

It could be worse, though. And it was. Growing up, we were all taught to sing a ditty called “When Grandpa Comes” that went something like this:

“It’s always fun when Grandpa comes; when Grandpa comes, I’m gay!”

Now my kids sing “When Grandpa Comes” every Father’s Day in Sacrament Meeting with this minor but significant revision:

“It’s always fun when Grandpa comes; when Grandpa comes, hooray!”

Hooray, indeed.

It’s not just intimations of latent homosexuality and pedophilia that have prompted the Church correlation department to revamp the hymnal over the years. For decades, the stoic anthem “How Firm A Foundation” included this couplet:

“What more can He say than to you He hath said/ You, who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?”

Nothing wrong with that, right? Except that the song required you to sing the first phrase of the second line three times in a row, and the meter made it sound like everyone in the congregation was saying “YooHoo unto Jesus.” Now I think Jesus probably appreciated being YooHoo’d – why wouldn’t he? - but the unintentional giggles proved too much for the folks at Church Headquarters, who altered the words thusly:

“What more can He say than to you He hath said/Who unto the Savior for refuge have fled?”

It’s new, but can you really say it’s improved? I swear that every time this hymn is sung, there are some stubborn YooHooers unto Jesus who refuse to go quietly into that good night.

The hymns that are really fun are the fire-and-brimstone tunes that have been softened for politically correct reasons. The cheery paean to drudgery called “Have I Done Any Good In The World Today?” once told us that:

“Only he who does something is worthy to live/The world has no use for the drone.”

Probably to prevent an onslaught of drone euthanasia, the words were transformed into something less Draconian:

“Only he who does something helps others to live/To God each good work will be known.”

Not quite as threatening, but it lets you know that God is still watching, so all us drones aren’t really off the hook.

If I had my way, some of the weird old hymns from yesteryear would be pulled out of mothballs to freak out the youth of today. If you want an example, look no further than “Though In The Outward Church Below:”

Though in the outward church below

The wheat and tares together grow;

Jesus ere long will weed the crop,

And pluck the tares, in anger, up.

Will it relieve their horrors there,

To recollect their stations here?

How much they heard, how much they knew,

How long amongst the wheat they grew!

No! This will aggravate their case!

They perished under means of grace;

To them the word of life and faith,

Became an instrument of death.

Bet you didn’t know the word of life and faith could become an instrument of death, didja? I, for one, can’t wait for the weeding!

I suppose it’s inevitable that a lot of this quirkiness falls by the wayside as the Church continues to roll forth. We offend less people as the hymns get blander, but we lose something indefinable in the process. I plan to stay faithful regardless, but you know that “If You Could Hie To Kolob” isn’t going to make it to the next edition, don’t you?

THE GOOD:

The turkey.

The rest of the feast was great, too, but the turkey was exquisite. It was magnificent. It was scrumtralescent.

How good was it? There are no words.

For the past three years, we’ve been given fresh turkeys by one of my clients. How fresh? Well, our turkey was alive and gobbling on Tuesday afternoon. It went into our oven about thirty-six hours after its timely demise. It was slow-cooked to perfection and served up hot. I can honestly say that I have never had a better turkey. I’d be willing to bet that you have never had a better turkey. Call it poultry hubris, but my turkey was the flat-out best ever hatched.

I’m not kidding. My turkey made your turkey look like a child pornographer.

(Did you catch the two Will Ferrell references? Doesn’t matter if you did – my turkey still rocked.)

THE BAD:

Netflix sent us the first disc of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on the day before Thanksgiving. I tried watching it with my kids in the afternoon, and I was stunned at how stupefyingly boring it was.

After about twenty minutes of tedious narration and mind-numbing exposition, it became clear that we were watching the equivalent of a third-grade educational filmstrip/travelogue, only with better production values. No wonder this show never caught on. It couldn’t be less Indiana Jonesy if it tried.

“Is something going to happen?” asked one of my twins.

“I don’t think so,” I answered. We turned it off and watched Ratatouille again instead. I fell asleep. (All that tryptophan, you know.)

THE UGLY:

We had Thanksgiving at our house with my wife’s parents and two of her siblings and their families. The first rule when dealing with my in-laws is never talk about politics. Ever. My mother-in-law is a Democrat, but only because most Mormons are Republicans. My father-in-law is a genuine independent, except he thinks Dick Cheney is too evil to burn in the regular hell and deserves a special, extra-crispy hell fueled by Halliburton oil and the charbroiled bones of all the Iraqis he’s slaughtered. (My wife was a Democrat when she married me. Now she’s a registered Republican. I consider that to be my greatest single victory in our thirteen years of marriage.)

Anyway, when my sister-in-law announced that she hates Hillary Clinton, all bets were off. To her credit, my mother-in-law wisely left the room at that point, whereas my normally mild-mannered father-in-law started to spit fire and insist that Bush should be impeached because he lied us into war that has killed half a million Iraqis. Both of these statements are provably untrue, but I bit my tongue until he started wailing on Cheney.

“Dick Cheney is even worse,” he said, “because he committed treason when he outed a covert CIA agent because she’d proven his war was based on a lie.”

I didn’t raise my voice, but there is absolutely nothing in this statement that even slightly resembles reality. To refute this nonsense, I proceeded to recount the timeline of the whole Joe Wilson debacle, and he walked out of the room. The rest of my family told me to drop it, which I did eventually, but it still bugs the crap out of me. Everyone kept saying “it’s just his opinion,” which made me even madder. When people say things like “9/11 was an inside job” or “the holocaust didn’t happen,” yes, they’re expressing their opinions, but their opinions are based on bad facts. When someone says “2+2=37,” you can just write it off as their opinion, but it might not be a bad idea to persuade them their “opinion” is WRONG! WRONG, I TELL YOU!

Now I’m getting all hot and bothered again.

Just for my own edification, here are the basic, fundamental facts. I won’t review how conventional wisdom got lost along the way. Just consider these three:

Valerie Plame, the CIA agent in question, was not a covert agent when her identity was revealed. Revealing her name was not “treason” or any other crime. Patrick Fitzgerald, the Democrat-approved prosecutor who was looking for any evidence that could have nailed Cheney, Bush, Karl Rove, or any significant administration official to the wall, was forced to concede that revealing Plame’s status did not constitute a violation of the law.
The person who identified Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to Robert Novak in the column that started the whole brouhaha was a man named Richard Armitage, a Clinton holdover in the state department who was opposed to the Iraq war from the outset.
Scooter Libby, Cheney’s former Chief of Staff and the only person prosecuted for anything in all this mess, was convicted of perjury – NOT for revealing Plame’s identity, as is widely believed. He lied to a grand jury about whether he had learned Plame’s status from his boss or from Tim Russert of NBC News.

That’s all. I’m done. It was a good day otherwise. And the turkey was really good.

That is all.

Tomorrow's Thanksgiving! Shouldn't you be doing something other than reading blogs?

Allow me to be helpful. Since I know all of you visit this blog for the cooking tips, I provide you with my wife's yams recipe.

All my life, I hated yams. Then my wife baked up some of these. It just goes to show that enough sugar can make anything palatable.

Here it is:

___________________

5 large yams
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla
1/3 c. milk
1/2 c. heavy cream
1 c. lt brown sugar
1/3 c. melted butter
1 c. chopped pecans

Bake yams at 350 for 40 minutes. Mix yams w/ butter, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla. Pour into 9 x 9 pan. Put cream in sauce pan. Simmer then add brown sugar. Cook over medium heat to soft ball stage. (on a candy thermometer it will say what temp is soft ball) Remove from heat. Beat in melted butter and pecans. Pour over sweet potatoes. Bake until they're hot and top bubbles.

If I remember correctly, I usually do 8 or 9 large yams, but I make the same amount of the topping. Then I cook it in a 9 x 13 pan.

Have fun. For anyone else out there who needs a way to disguise dessert as vegetables, this is an awful good way of doing it.

Mrs. Cornell

__________________

Enjoy! Now I've gotta go home and hang up more Christmas lights. Yeesh.

11:35 AM

The Salt Lake Tribune carried an article today about a rebuttal to a speech given by LDS General Relief Society President Julie B. Beck in the most recent LDS General Conference.

The whole sorry incident just makes me sad.

A recap for those of you who missed it:

In October, Sister Beck gave a speech to the general church membership that began as follows:

There is eternal influence and power in motherhood. In the Book of Mormon we read about 2,000 exemplary young men who were exceedingly valiant, courageous, and strong. "Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him" (Alma 53:21). These faithful young men paid tribute to their mothers. They said, "Our mothers knew it.” (Alma 56:48)

With reference to that final scriptural passage, Beck titled her remarks “Mothers Who Know.” Most of the speech was fairly innocuous, yet it contained the following incendiary passages:

Beck on having children:

Mothers who know desire to bear children. Whereas in many cultures in the world children are "becoming less valued," in the culture of the gospel we still believe in having children. Prophets, seers, and revelators who were sustained at this conference have declared that "God's commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force."

Beck on dress and grooming:

Mothers who know honor sacred ordinances and covenants. I have visited sacrament meetings in some of the poorest places on the earth where mothers have dressed with great care in their Sunday best despite walking for miles on dusty streets and using worn-out public transportation. They bring daughters in clean and ironed dresses with hair brushed to perfection; their sons wear white shirts and ties and have missionary haircuts.

On homemaking:

Mothers who know are nurturers… Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world.

Many people were upset by these remarks. To some, this speech places inordinate emphasis on what the unenlightened might call “women’s work,” which feeds a stereotype of Mormon women as second-class citizens, housebound servants to their authoritarian husbands and plentiful children.

I must confess that I heard the talk when it was being given, and I found it unremarkable, although that may be because it came in the middle of several mid-Conference naps. Still, I ‘d like to address the three offending passages in turn.

There was nothing in the “having children” portion that bothered me at all. Implicit in her encouragement to multiply and replenish is the biological and spiritual necessity of a righteous father, too. Although she was speaking primarily to mothers, I fail to see how this statement is demeaning to women. If it is in any way damning, it damns both genders equally.

As for the dress and grooming section, I think Beck’s critics are assigning significance to her words that the context fails to sustain. The people she praises are individual examples of sacrifice and commitment, and that’s all that they are. She’s not insisting that everyone in the church brush their hair to perfection, any more than she’s demanding that each of us walk “for miles on dusty streets” or use “worn-out public transportation.” If you want to extrapolate a universal application for this – i.e. Moms better be sure that all children are in clean, ironed, white clothing and have their hair expertly coiffed at all times – then feel free. Just don’t pretend that’s what Julie Beck said, because she didn’t.

It’s the final passage that is probably the most provocative. Women have to be homemakers? They have to wash clothes and dishes and keep the house clean? Well, yes. Except nowhere do Beck’s remarks preclude men from getting in on the homemaking action, too. I’ll concede that Sister Beck’s language is pretty clumsy here. By addressing the talk solely to mothers, Beck seems to be downplaying the significance of fathers and the necessity of fathers to share the burdens of homemaking. I don’t think that was her intent. I doubt she would be upset if Dad was doing the dishes while Mom was folding clothes, which is usually the way it works in my house.

All this is prelude, however, to my real point.

The “rebuttal” to Beck’s talk is a deeply stupid idea, and not only because the content of the rebuttal itself is deeply stupid.

Of course, the rebuttal’s inherent asininity doesn’t help. It’s insufferably self-righteous, insisting that:

Several ideas within the body of President Beck's talk conflict with our inspiration and experience. We are authors of our own lives, and this is the story we know to be true. [Emphasis added by me.]

The authors of their own lives then list the several areas of “conflict,” beginning with this one:

Fathers as well as mothers, men as well as women, are called to nurture. Nurturing is not confined to mothering or housekeeping, but is a universal attribute that communicates patience, peacefulness, and care.

Swell, Authors of Our Own Lives (AOOOL). Please show me how this conflicts with anything in Sister Beck’s talk? Show me where she insists that men cannot nurture, or that nurturing is solely defined by housekeeping skill? Where, exactly, does she come out in full force against patience, peacefulness, and care?

This is the problem with the entirety of the Authors of Our Own Lives brief. For the most part, their manifesto attributes to Beck things she didn’t say or even imply in order to whine about how awful the world is for women today. It even ludicrously “reject[s] the glorification of violence in all its forms,” because Beck had the audacity to refer to the 2,000 stripling warriors as “exceedingly valiant, courageous, and strong.” The war story fills the AOOOL with “unutterable sadness” because these warriors were sent to “kill other mothers' children.” This is a gross misreading of both Julie Beck and the Book of Mormon. It makes me wonder why the AOOOL bother with the church in the first place.

However, the AOOOL cross the line between foolishness and irresponsibility when they demand that, “We reverence the responsibility to choose how, when, and whether we become parents.”

As Julie M. Smith, a blogger at timesandseasons.org wrote:

“I’m all over the “when.”

“How” makes me a little nervous.

But unless the signers understand something different than I do by “whether,” then I think that their statement is not in harmony with the established teachings of the Church. In the context of a temple-married LDS couple, children are not optional.

She’s right. And that’s a hard thing to say. It’s an even harder thing to hear. Surely it makes the AOOOL uncomfortable. But the reality of living as a church member is submitting to the church’s authority. The AOOOL may seem compassionate and enlightened, but in refusing to accept doctrines they don’t like, they’re really no different from the FLDSers who refused to accept the Manifesto or the bigots who ran away after President Kimball’s priesthood revelation in 1978.

If you think a church doesn’t have the right to tell you to have children, then that’s your prerogative. But if your church can be stripped of its authority whenever you don’t like what it says, then what authority does it really have left? And in what respect, then, can you still be termed a member of said church?

Don’t get me wrong. There is plenty of room in the LDS Church for people who struggle, who question, and who disagree occasionally. I know, because I’m one of them. But once you go public and adopt an adversarial position with the Church, your allegiances have shifted. You’re no longer trying to improve your own community from the inside; you’re on the outside looking in, doing battle. Spiritually speaking, that’s a very dangerous place to be.

I don’t think much will come of this, and I’m not calling for the excommunication of the AOOOL or for anyone to be burned at the stake. I just wish everyone would have taken Sister Beck at face value and tried to find the positives instead of putting their names to antagonistic and politically correct nonsense.

If I have to take sides between my Church and the AOOOLies, I’ll take the Church every time.

In reference to Hollywood, writer William Goldman once famously remarked that “no one knows anything.”

It’s true in Hollywood, but it’s especially true in the world of politics. If you doubt it, look at Dick Morris, however unpleasant it may be to do so.

Morris is a weasel who’s worked for both Jesse Helms and Bill Clinton. He is also a guy who has made an entire career out of knowing nothing. After leaving the Clintons because he was getting his toes sucked by prostitutes, Morris has inflicted his colossally boneheaded prognostication skills on the public at large. Some examples:

In 1998, he predicted a huge Republican tidal wave. Instead, the Republicans lost seats in both houses of Congress.

In 2000, he assured us the next president would be Al Gore, and by a comfortable margin. Oops.

In 2002, Morris was certain the Democrats were going to retake both houses of Congress. Instead, they lost seats – and control of the US Senate.

Morris promised us that 2004 would end with the election of President John Kerry. Oops again.

All of this teaches us one immutable truth: Dick Morris is an idiot.

Yet people keep paying him money, and they listen to what he has to say. Why? Seriously, why? He was right about the Republican debacle in 2006, but who wasn’t? You’d have to be either Beavis and/or Butthead to have whiffed it on that one. The only reason I had a sliver of hope that Republicans might have been able to pull ‘06 out of the crapper was that Dick Morris was predicting the opposite.

The surest way to easy money is to bet against Dick Morris.

So what does this moron have to say about ’08? Well, after having written a ludicrous book about the presidential race between Hillary and Condoleeza Rice, who was never even close to being a candidate, Morris concludes that Hillary is unstoppable. The GOP is washed out until 2010, when they’ll sweep back into power on a 1994-style tidal wave.

Wrong. Here’s what’s going to happen.

On the Democratic side, Hillary will stumble a bit in Iowa, but she’ll come roaring back in New Hampshire and will sew up the nomination in short order after that.

The Republican side will become interesting when Mitt Romney wins both Iowa and New Hampshire by comfortable margins. Thompson and McCain will then be gone, and Huckabee, with a strong showing in Iowa, will limp along until Super Tuesday, when a lack of money and organization will force him to declare a moral victory and disappear. That leaves Romney and Giulani still standing, despite the fact that Rudy won’t have won anything yet. Unfortunately, everyone already expects Romney to take the first two early contests, so he won’t get the huge bounce in media coverage he’s looking for. What he will get, though, is the unified force of the “Anyone but Rudy” vote, which is currently diluted by McCain, Thompson, and Huckabee, all of whom will be history by February. Giulani’s aura of inevitability will vanish, as will the idea that the way to beat Hillary is to nominate a pro-choice, anti-gun, thrice-divorced malcontent. Giuliani wins Florida, and that’s it. He’s done.

Romney, to everyone’s surprise, becomes the Republican nominee.

Suddenly, with a clear choice between Hillary and Romney, everyone remembers why they hated Hillary in the first place. Pundits will make hay out of Romney’s Mormonism – Dick Morris insists it makes him unelectable – but America will compare Mormonism to Clintonism, and even the hardcore Evangelicals will hold their noses and vote against Hillary. The Bush haters will have a harder time connecting Mitt to Bush than they thought, since Mitt will continue to run against Washington, of which Hillary is the living embodiment of everything that’s wrong therewith. Faced with the sad reality of perpetuating a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton dynasty for another eight years, America, despite all of their problems with W, will elect another Republican.

“Hail to the Chief” will play for President Mitt Romney in January of 2009.

The unease with Republicans will be reflected in the Congress, where Democrats will gain seats in both the the House and Senate, yet be unable to get a large enough margin to actually do anything. As for 2010, who the heck knows? It depends on Romney. The only solid info we have is that Morris says the Repubs will win big, so expect massive Democrat gains.

There! See how easy that is? So where’s my book deal?

A friend of mine from college told me I'd love Facebook, and at first, I balked. It sounded too MySpacey for my tastes, but he assured me that it wasn't. Some of the features are the same, but, unlike MySpace, not everyone can see your page - only your friends can. That way, I don't have to worry about pedophiles scoping out info on my prepubescent daughters.

So I registered an account, and it seemed harmless enough. My college buddy was my only Facebook friend, and that was fine. I didn't see what the big deal was. He would "throw a sheep" at me every once in awhile with the "SuperPoke" function. If the mood struck me, I would throw a sheep back. That was about it.

Then, on a lark, I checked around to see who else I could find that I might know. That's when I discovered how remarkably functional Facebook is. You can comb through various networks made up of your hometown, your high school, your college, and in seconds, you stumble across someone you know. So I sent a few people a simple "friend request." And suddenly, instead of 1 friend, I had about 12.

Then it started getting fun.

Facebook gives you a "news feed," where you learn what your friends are doing. It's pleasantly unobtrusive - all friend updates are listed on a simple, nondescript page where you can click what interests you and peruse more info when you're in the mood. You suddenly feel connected to people you'd almost forgotten, and it requires very little effort to maintain.

So Friday night, I went nuts.

My lovely wife was out with the girls, and, after I had put the boys to bed, I was all by myself. Hence, I got Facebookedly aggressive. I thought my 12 friends were all I could manage, but I started to comb networks to see if I could find anyone else I knew. When I stumbled on one, I looked through their list of friends, and discovered I knew about ten or so of their friends. Those lists yielded a treasure trove of others, and it pretty much snowballed from there.

I was a little nervous about some of my friend requests. Do they even remember me? Are they still mad at me? Then I thought "the worst they can do is say no." And even though I knew some of these folks in real life better than others, it's still fun to hear what they're up to now and again.

A few thoughts:

Artsy people are more likely to be on Facebook than average civilians. I've found a gazillion people from all the theatre stuff I've done, but not one person from my MBA classes at BYU or from my missionary days. Likewise, young people facebook more than old ones - I've made contact with a lot of my old Tuacahn High students, for instance - and that makes me feel like a bit of a geezer.

So sign up, people! I'm up to 39 friends at last count. I just threw some mashed potatoes at everyone.

Like I needed something else to waste my time.

Languatron, who's $50 welched bet with RGrant is the stuff of legend, is now spewing pathetic excuses for why he chickened out of the opportunity to put his bravado where his fists are. In his book, Languatron cheerfully promises to "kick my a.. to the Moon" if he ever gets a chance to meet me.

So I gave him that chance. And he chickened out. What does he have to say for himself?

Well, here's his response. (You can read it in its original context by clicking here.)

One has to question the mental stability of this guy who has me on his mind way too often. First, he mentions me practically every other day in his blog, then he announces that he is polluting O'Hare Airport with his Mormon, Universal executive presence, and wants me to come and get him.

I've already proven that I can "get" people like Cornell in far more effective ways, such as in bulletin board posts, and in books.

A fine response. Nice to know Languatron is a regular reader. And I, too, question my own mental stability.

But then he gets wussy as he responds to AlphaNova, who congratulates him on his wussiness.

I'm glad you're safe and sound, Alpha. I would hope that all of the physical threats made on the Internet are just words. In the case of Stallion_Cornell, I think his mental stability has deteriorated considerably recently (not that he was ever mentally sound in the first place), and for him to even jokingly remark that he is waiting for me at O'Hare Airport for a physical confrontation is distrubing to say the least. Though I remarked that I wanted to "kick his butt to the Moon if I ever met him", that was a figure of speech, not a literal promise. Cornell often interprets literally figures of speech to advance whatever deranged agendas he has.

So his threat wasn't a threat. It was a "figure of speech," which I took as a threat of physical violence because of my "deranged agenda." (One ponders in vain as to how one would derange an agenda, but I digress.)

If this was just a "figure of speech," what, in fact, was Languatron really trying to say? Surely he was not literally going to thrust his foot solidly into my buttocks and propel me to the Sea of Tranquility. In that sense, yes, his empty taunt was a figure of speech, where the actual words are not to be understood with their literal meanings. But the phrase "kick your butt" is a figure of speech implying physical violence, a threat made even more likely by the necessity Languatron placed on meeting me in person to carry out said threat.

Yet, apparently, what he meant was "If I ever get a chance to meet Stallion Cornell in person, I'm going to hide like a little girl and post infantile tauntings on an obscure Internet bulletin board." That's what he does now. Why would he have to meet me in person to do it some more?

I guess "I owe RGrant fifty bucks" is a figure of speech for "I enjoy a sauna in my own flatulence."

I'm compelled to agree with Foodleking, in that the federal government shouldn’t be in the business of funding the arts. (I don’t have as much of a problem with state funding, though, but that’s another story.)

Set aside the fact that art subsidies are outside the bounds of limited government defined in the Constitution, along with just about everything else that Washington does. In practice, the program is open to all kinds of abuses, and it creates a culture of victimization with those “artistes” who equate a lack of government funding with censorship, which is abject nonsense. Free speech protects your right to express yourself. It doesn’t guarantee that the government will pay you for it.

But if the government has to fund the arts, I’m glad they got me to do it. And I’m more than willing to rise above principle if I can get an occasional free trip to DC.

Anyway, I was on a panel with six other theatre professionals from all over the country. I was there as a designated layperson, and it was a little embarrassing to go around the room and introduce ourselves and say what we do.

“Hi! I’m Artsy McFartsy! I’m the artistic director of a big, important theatre in New York City!”

“Hi! I’m Sally Superstar! I’m a Broadway actress with a resume as long as my arm!”

And then me.

“Hi, I’m Stallion Cornell. I rent vacation condos in Kauai.”

Everyone else was probably more artistically accomplished, but I took comfort in the fact that I probably make more money than all of them. A life in the arts is not a particularly lucrative one, even for people at the highest levels thereof.

I was almost certainly the only Republican in the room, too, although the entire experience was surprisingly apolitical. There were no “Piss Christ” or Mapplethorpe S&M grant requests. The only time anything remotely political came into the equation was when people praised arts groups for “non-traditional casting” and “diversity” excellence. I think the word “diversity” is woefully abused in most political settings. When politicians or university officials use the term, they’re intensely concerned with irrelevant skin pigmentation differences and shun the genuine diversity of ideas.

But that was neither here nor there. I think non-traditional casting is usually a good thing – once upon a time, I cast interracial leads in Guys and Dolls in lily-white St. George, Utah – so this didn’t bug me all that much.

I’m bound by contract not to reveal the names of the applicants, the grant level amounts, or any real specificity about what we discussed until the awards are announced on April 1. But I can, hopefully, provide you with a few little tidbits you might find interesting.

At one point, I questioned whether one group, which had a multimillion-dollar endowment and great ticket sales, really needed a grant from the NEA. The answer came back that the NEA does not consider financial need when they decide to fund grants. In fact, if your organization is financially unstable, they are far less likely to get a grant. The NEA, I was told, “funds the art they want to be associated with.”

At first, I was taken aback, but I liked that idea more and more as I thought about it. NEA grants are more valuable than the dollar amounts attached to them. They’re essentially the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in the arts world, and they enhance the stature of an organization in the eyes of potential donors.

It all comes back to the principle that I kept hammering home when I was an artistic director for a struggling arts company – people fund vision, not need.

Along those lines, I was disappointed in how few original musical theatre works were being presented. Most of the requests were to fund mainstream musicals – Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, and, surprisingly, three requests for the musical Big River. Those who asked for money to fund original works met with an enthusiastic response from everyone on the panel, although some of the work samples changed our minds. “Original” is not always synonymous with “good.”

On a lark, I brought a copy of my own original musical, hoping it would fall out of my bag and someone would say “My! What’s this? Doesn’t this need to be funded, too?”

Yeah, swell idea. It stayed in my bag the whole trip.

All in all, my trip to DC was way too much fun. I ended the day visiting an old friend from USC that I hadn’t seen in almost 15 years. I met her family, and her three-year-old son took the occasion to put Band-Aids on both of my thumbs, which I forgot to take off until the following morning.

Summing up: I was in Chicago, and Languatron didn’t show. Wuss.

In your book, you threatened to "kick my a.. to the moon" if you got the chance to meet me in person.

Well, now's your chance. I'm in your hometown.

I'm sitting in the Chicago O'Hare Airport, Concourse H, Gate 11B. I'll be here for about 45 minutes.

Come and get me.

It's 5:30 in the morning DC time - 3:30 by my internal Utah clock - and I'm off to catch a plane. I had a great time yesterday figuring out how to spend your money. I'll tell you all about it when I get back to the West. In the meantime, enjoy and/or suffer through another excerpt from An Evening with Stallion Cornell.

______________________

From Act VIII of Cumquats on the Water

WOMAN

(A strange fellow is playing the guitar in the corner.)

Play on, minstrel! Oh, play on!

Play the tunes of a days gone by, when the men were free and the boys loved ... loved...
Oh, dammit, minstrel, the boys never loved me! Never! Sure, if I paid them, they'd wash my car - but I could wash it myself! Yes, yes, I know -- I never did!

Oh, my filthy, filthy car! It reminds me of those precious moments strumming the guitar with minstrels of all ethnic persuasions - minstrels who would wander the streets of Paris like ducks in a tree. Minstrels who would offer me a guitar - a silver guitar -a golden lute -- in exchange for my IMMORTAL SOUL!! Think of it -hellfire awaits if I but pluck a single golden string. Well, I ain't that plucky! But if I had to - I would, now. Just for a moment of music to soothe my buttocks one more time - if only - if only - Minstrel, what guitar playeth thou? Hey minstrel - that's MY GUITAR! My guitar of gold! Give it to me! (She waits for him to hand over the guitar. He doesn't.) My guitar, my good minstrel! (Still no response.) Am I damned forever for the minstrel's gold that shall never touch my soul? Truly Beelzebub waits with shiny teeth to rip my spirit raw! Is there no joy in Mudville?

(She begins to sob uncontrollably. The minstrel stops playing, walks over, and silently hands her a harmonica.) What is this? Pray, dear muses above, what measly crumbs do you throw me to appease my anguish? (She blows a few notes, and starts to smile.) This is the music - MY music! Now I know why fate has left my car so dirty!

MINSTREL
Yes, my dear, but the price for your pretty little tune is your pretty little soul.

WOMAN
I knew that. Somehow (trying her best not to sob) I always knew.

(She collapses and melts as the minstrel explodes.)

Not much time to blog today. Soon I descend into Artsy Fartsism as I review requests for the government's money to produce self-important dreck and/or Guys and Dolls.

In honor of the occasion, I offer you another excerpt from An Evening with Stallion Cornell, which, for unfathomable reasons, has never received government funding.

--------------------------------

From Act II of The Worms of Hell

EVERY MAN:

What makes you think you'll ever be able to understand? I don't need your pity--I don't need your sickly sweet smiles--I don't need you to tell me everything's all right.

Time? (Laughs.)

What is time to a man like me? I've seen a nation die--I've seen all I've ever worked for crumple into one bloody heap! Can you give me time? Time for revenge? For death? For the angry fire that I will never tame? The churning, fiery volcano of hate that burns hotter than the sun itself? Damn you! Damn you to hell! And may the infernal demons which slather for your soul consume your very innards in their unyielding flames! I'd offer you a biscuit first, but I don't like you very much.

So Die! And let the worms nibble on your bowels.

Keeping it short today - I’m traveling again.

I’ve been selected to serve on the Musical Theatre panel to review grant applications for the National Endowment for the Arts. That’s really cool, except that it means I have to be on a plane at 6:00 AM this morning, which stops over in Denver and then heads off to DC. I got to the airport early enough to bump into Wayne Osmond of Osmond Brothers fame!

Jealous?

This Brush with Greatness wasn't enough to make travelling fun, though. Take all the travel horror stories I told you about Kauai and apply them to a far less temperate climate.

I’m still pretty excited, though. I love DC. I was born there, although my memory of that event is hazy at best. (I was pretty young then.) We moved to sunny SoCal when I was six, but I have far more memories of my early childhood than I thought I would. My wife and I moved back to the our nation's capitol in ’94 right after we got married, and we had a blast. I was an intern for Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, and I got the opportunity to write several installments of “Face Off,” a nightly five-minute debate between Al Simpson and Ted Kennedy. It was broadcast on national radio, and the first time I heard it, I jumped up and down and said “Yeeha! I’m arguing with Ted Kennedy on national radio!” To which my wife responded – “No, you’re really arguing with some other snot-nosed intern in Kennedy’s office who’s saying the same thing.”

My wife keeps me humble. Which is too bad, really, ‘cause I’m a frikkin’ genius.

I was recently reminded of a conversation I once had with a woman who insisted that Jesus didn’t eat.

Her thinking was somewhat reasonable. Jesus, after all, created the earth and all the plants and animals therein, so the Creator, logically, wouldn’t consume that which He created, right? Well, I guess that stands to reason, other than the fact that the New Testament records several occasions of Jesus eating, even after His resurrection when he was no longer mortal and wouldn’t need food to sustain Himself.

Ah, but that was just an illusion, she said. He simply pretended to eat.

And how did He do that? I asked.

Answer: He’s Jesus. He’s the Son of God. He can do whatever He wants.

Yes, well, I suppose there’s some truth in that, too. But the woman’s supposition doesn’t really saying anything about Jesus, per se, although it says a lot about the woman herself. Jesus may have been capable of going without food his whole life – 40 days of fasting, anyone? – but if we are to believe the NT writers, He ate. Her dismissal of inconvenient scriptures as illusory simply meant that she’d found a way of remaking God in her own image. She says Jesus can do whatever He wants, but her Jesus doesn’t do whatever He wants.

He does whatever she wants.

I’ve also heard others claim that Jesus is a vegetarian using a similar rationale, despite the whole loaves and fishes thing. Maybe fish are a vegetable. I have a sister-in-law who is a vegetarian but still eats fish, so there you go. It’s all so complicated – even today, nobody can give me a straight answer on what a tomato is. But I digress.

You see a bunch of this kind of nonsense in the world today, like the environmentalists who ran the "What would Jesus drive?" campaign, insisting the Lord would prefer a hybrid to an SUV. Or consider Cornel West and/or My Esteemed Colleague, both of whom insist that Jesus was a Marxist, ignoring Marxism's contempt for religion, something Jesus would have been unlikely to overlook.

Disagreements about God’s dietary habits exemplify one of the reasons I’m a Latter-day Saint that believes in continual revelation. It’s much harder to remake God when He’s still around to correct the record.

Most Christians believe that all revelation ended with the complete, self-sufficient, self-explanatory Bible, but they have a hard time agreeing on what the Bible is or what it means. If you were to drop the Bible on an alien world with no instructions other than to fashion a religion based on its precepts, how much would you want to bet that whatever they came up with would look radically different from anything we see on Earth? You think they’d spontaneously come up with the Nicene Creed or Christmas trees? You think they’d celebrate the Resurrection by having rabbits hide colored eggs?

The Bible isn’t religion. The Bible is a record of people who had religion. True religion comes via direct revelation from God. That’s how the people in the Bible did it, and that’s how we should do it, too.

Which gets to the heart of the matter:

The question “What would Jesus do?” always bugs me.

We really don’t know what Jesus would do under most circumstances, and, like the "Jesus is a Fruitarian" example, our guesses say more about us than they do about Him.

Case in point:

At a critical moment in my life, a church leader – I’ll call him Phil - provided me with counsel that I’ve never forgotten, although not for the reasons he intended.

On this occasion, I was wondering whether or not I should pursue a career as an actor. To help guide my decision, Phil told the story of going to see a movie that his son had picked out. Phil found the film to be highly offensive.

“Ah, gee, Pop,” the son told Phil, “compared to most stuff in theatres today, that movie wasn’t half bad.”

“Would you take a date to see that movie?” Phil asked.

“Sure,” said the son.

But then Phil delivered what he considered to be the coup de grace:

“Would you take the Savior to see that movie?”

I knew where he was heading with this, so I stopped him and said, “I wouldn’t take the Savior to see any movie!”

To which Phil replied, ”That’s why I don’t go see movies.”

I still agree with my answer, but not because movies are inherently immoral. I wouldn’t take the Savior to a movie, but I wouldn’t take the Savior to a baseball game, either. Heck, I wouldn’t take Him to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert. So, certainly, if the Savior showed up at my doorstep, I wouldn’t say, “you know, there’s a matinee of Dan In Real Life playing at 4:45 – we can just make it if we leave now, though we might miss the previews.”

When I was getting my MBA at BYU, we were presented with an ethical dilemma. Suppose you work for a bank, and it’s your responsibility to evaluate business loans for a new customer. You discover the financials are rock solid, but there’s a slight hitch – the client's business is producing pornography.

Do you recommend that the loan be approved?

I thought the answer was clear cut. I wasn’t the one making the final decision on the loan – it was my job just to make sure the financials were in order. They were. So I would do my job.

Then one of the other students got indignant. “What would Jesus do?” he asked me, certain that would change my mind and put the issue to rest.

“I don’t know,” I answered back. “Would Jesus be a loan officer?”

That's not the only question. Would Jesus refuse to pass on the information because it would be used in a way He would disapprove of? Would Jesus fulfill his obligations, despite the fact that he worked for an imperfect employer? Would Jesus grab his cat-o-nine-tails and clear the moneychangers out of the bank? Would he call down legions of angels to bring the pornographers to their eternal reward?

What would Jesus do? The only way to know is to ask Him. And if He doesn't tell you, you're on your own.

Summing up: I like fresh tomatoes slices with pepper, no matter what they are.

People accuse me of wasting a lot of time on the Internet, and I plead guilty. I’ve still managed to remain marginally functional, but I sneak a lot of web surfing into the cracks in the day. Most of my time is spent in front of a computer screen anyway, so it’s not that hard to do.

And, believe it or not, this isn’t the only place I hang out on this here InterWeb thingee. Just in case you want to join me in my quest for irrelevance, I now provide you with the links I have at the top of my Safari toolbar. Use them wisely. Or not.

These are the bookmarks from left to right, and, since the most recent ones are on the left, the bookmarks go from newest to oldest. I’ll even include the identifying codes I use, unless the names need to be changed to protect the innocent.

#1 - FB - It’s just in the past few days that a friend of mine from college has gotten me hooked on Facebook, which is an upscale, more private MySpace for grown-ups. I accidentally ran into a few people from my childhood – including the brother of a Korean guy who my sister was once planning on marrying. (Initials J-SK, family. Brother of B-SK.) It’s kind of fun; it’s easy; and it lets me throw a sheep at people for no particular reason with the SuperPoke function.

#2 - Blog - That’s where I find the Bookmark for this blog. I can go from here to my dashboard, where I can edit posts, delete comments, and wonder why the heck Blogger software is so buggy.

#3 - GA and #4 - GAW. These are work bookmarks, one for Google Analytics and one for Google Adwords. I can see how many people have visited the Kauai websites and change ads and such. I can also see who’s visiting this blog, which is getting around 100 unique visits a day from all over the world. A lot come from Utah, a lot from California, and, surprisingly, a bunch come from Massachusetts. I also get a bunch from Chicago Ridge, Illinois. Languatron, is that you?

#5 – NRO – National Review Online, the best conservative website out there. The Corner has been called the “water cooler for conservatives.” It’s an especially good place to hang out on election nights, because all the writers there get the inside scoop on all the results as they come in.

#6 – This is the MySpace page of a guy I’ve referred to on this site as My Esteemed Colleague in posts about crank calling and Landrum hatred.

It is, shall we say, unique.

My boring communist post was a response to one of his blog entries. He doesn’t update the page as often as I’d like, but I find he’s always worth reading. The only problem is that the pag, upon your arrival, plays a soundbite mixing The A-Team and Star Wars, so if you visit this page when people are around, make sure you turn down the sound.

#7 – frak – This is the homepage of Frakheads.com, the only place where Languatron consistently posts on the Internet anymore. I’ve lost interest, but I haven’t removed the link from my toolbar, so perhaps the day will come when I engage him in battle yet again.

#8 – Skiffy – This is the home page of the SciFi Channel Battlestar Galactica forum. I used to be quite the regular over there, but I rarely visit. I haven’t bothered to remove this one from my browser, either.

#9 – CA – The Cylon Alliance, the finest geek bulletin board this side of the Pecos. (Actually, since the people who run the board are from all over the world, I’m not sure which side of the Pecos they’re on.) I’m a sporadic participant over there, but I read what’s going on pretty regularly.

#10 – Rush – Yes, that’s right. I have a link to the RushLimbaugh.com website on my browser. And I use it, too. It’s really good. It’s updated daily, and it organizes his entire three-hour show into easily digestible tidbits so you can ignore the stuff that doesn’t interest you.

#11 – L.com – This is a link to the Lucianne.com News Forum homepage. All the news stories of the day are posted by readers, who can then comment on the substance of them. I’ve commented occasionally, but not often. It’s a great place to see what stories are hot at the moment.

#12 – Cinescape – The Cinescape.com website is dead, but even though I’ve changed the link of the bookmark to point to the new site at mania.com, I can’t be bothered to change the actual name of the link. It’s a great place for movie info and gossip.

#13 – AICN – Ain’t It Cool News, THE place for movie news and rumors. I once got my fake review of Superman Returns published there before I’d actually seen the movie. The review was credited to Languatron’s Bane.

#14 – RCP – RealClearPolitics.com, which lists all the news stories of the day in much the same way Lucianne.com does, only you can’t comment on it. The cool thing about this site is that you can see all the latest polls, and the RCP average of all the polls, which gives you the best sense of where the presidential race is going.

#15 – T&S – TimesandSeasons.org, a group blog on Mormon stuff that was co-founded by my brother-in-law. It bills itself as “quite possibly the most symphonic, yet madcap, onymous Mormon group blog in history.” Quite possibly? I don’t think there’s any question.

#16 – My online banking site. No more information about said site will be offered here.

#17 – MMW – MormonMommyWars.com. I’m not a Mormon Mommy, but I know a bunch of them who post over there, so I look in on occasion. It always makes me feel like I’m eavesdropping on private girlie talk, but that’s not as fun as it sounds, because, apparently, girls in private talk about dirty diapers, diets, and dishes.

#18 – Blab – This is a private family bulletin board run by my siblings, most of whom post more often here than they do there.

#19 – OSC – This is Hatrack.com, the official website of Mormon author Orson Scott card. He has a weekly column called Uncle Orson Reviews Absolutely Everything that is always worth reading. He also has a political column that’s updated less frequently, but it’s always spot on in its analysis. (He protests that he’s still a Democrat, but he’s less and less convincing as time goes on.)

#20 – Moist – The link to Stallion Cornell’s Moist Board, a strange little bulletin board I started a few years ago that has taken on a life of its own. I’ve been called an Absentee Landlord over there, which is probably accurate, but I still like to go mix it up with everyone every once in awhile.

#21 – drudge – The Drudge Report. It’s also my home page.

That’s it. I can’t think of an exciting way to end this.

Word is that Batman is going to die.

No joke. Bruce Wayne is getting killed off in the comic books. He’s going to be replaced by Robin, or one of the Robins. See, it seems there are three Robins, past and present, on the scene at the moment. One of them, Jason Todd, used to be dead, but it didn’t work out.

So rest in peace, Bruce. It’s not like anyone cares. That sounds harsh, but death in comic books is about as relevant as Rosie O’Donnell. Comic book history is on a permanent treadmill, full of sound and fury, signifying less than nothing.

People might care if they thought Bruce's death was for real.

It isn’t.

Comic books are worse than soap operas. Nobody really dies, or if they do die, they don’t stay dead. Nobody ages, either. This causes problems for characters like Superman who’ve been around for six decades or so, because these characters tend to accumulate baggage. That’s why DC Comics, Superman’s publisher, blows up the universe every few years in a mega cosmic spectacular miniseries event. They did it in Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986, Zero Hour in 1994, Infinite Crisis last year, and the upcoming Final Crisis next year.

It’s easier to wipe out all of creation than it is for Superman to have to face his fortieth birthday.

That’s not to say that he isn’t mortal. Superman died in 1993. His arch-enemy, Lex Luthor, died a couple of years before that. About the same time, Batman had his spine severed and was confined to a wheelchair. Both Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards and his archenemy Dr. Doom were disintegrated by Doom’s really potent hand buzzer. Green Lantern went nuts, killed thousands of other Green Lanterns across the galaxy, and slaughtered the immortal Guardians of the Universe , later destroying the infinity of time and space before sacrificing himself to stop the sun from going out. Green Arrow died a little bit later, I think. I’m pretty sure that Wonder Woman, the immortal Amazon princess, has died a couple of times, too, but I haven’t paid much attention. And just a few months ago, Captain America was gunned down by a sniper. A bad scene. So much death. So much grieving. Weeping. Wailing. Teeth gnashing. The whole nine yards.

So where are they now?

Well, Wonder Woman apparently grew back out of the Amazonian mud, like a weed. The Green Lantern destruction of all space and time turned out to be a misunderstanding, and now all the other thousands of Lanterns are back, along with the universe guardians, space and time, and nacho cheese fries. Both Green Lantern and Green Arrow went to heaven, where they didn’t really fit in, so they both came back. Doom and Richards were not truly killed, just teleported into the distant past to be tortured by a madman from the far-flung future. Batman was healed by some magic brain-damaged chick, whereas Lex Luthor was fortunate that his henchman saved his brain and grew a new body out of it, which he used to pass himself off as his own Australian son. And, of course, Superman was placed in a Kryptonian regeneration matrix by an ancient Kryptonian artificial intelligence, but not before the A.I. deluded itself into thinking it was Superman.

There is, however, one comic book character who has stayed dead for over twenty years: Barry Allen, the Flash. He died in the Crisis on Infinite Earth mega event in ’86, which kept the Anti-Monitor from devouring the multiverse. Allen sacrificed himself to reboot the DC universe so that Superman wouldn’t have to use Grecian Formula. (Supergirl died then, too. She’s back now. And she's still 16 years old.)

Now, granted, Barry Allen has come back a few times, like his brief appearance in last year’s Infinite Crisis, but there’s some weird metaphysical explanation for that which probably involves some magic Kryptonian Green Lantern nachos. He’s still dead, dammit. And don’t you forget it. And now Bruce Wayne has gone to meet his maker, ar least until the sequel to Batman Begins comes out.

No word on Captain America, though. I’m sure he’s dead for real.

I don’t read comic books anymore.

With the writer’s strike damming up the floodgates of new creative material, the time may come when we may actually be forced to do something instead of watch something. If you’re not willing to go cold turkey, I thought I’d recommend some of my favorite movies, which I’m betting many of you have never seen. (I was going to talk vouchers, but that would bore you, wouldn’t it? Philistines!)

I’ve watched a lot of crap in my time. Much of it was cinematic junk food, but a good chunk of it was “important” filmmaking - obscure, independent, pretentious bilge that I had to “appreciate” in order to maintain my reputation as an artiste. Now that I’m old and fat, I don’t pretend to like movies I don’t like. These aren't artsy-fartsy flicks - these five movies are mainstream, studio releases that, for some reason, never quite caught on. If you haven’t seen them, check ‘em out.

#5) QUICK CHANGE

The plot centers around Bill Murray’s daring robbery of a large Manhattan bank in broad daylight, which involves Murray dressing up as a clown and taking a bunch of hostages. The first three hostages he releases are Randy Quaid and Geena Davis, his two accomplices, and Murray himself, who has shed his clown makeup and is all but unrecognizable as the gunman. Together, the three of them stroll out of the bank with a total of a million dollars strapped to their backs.

To date, I consider this the perfect blueprint of how to rob a bank.

The cast is note perfect, especially Jason Robards as the crusty cop close to retirement who hunts Murray down. It also has great cameos from Phil Hartman and Tony Shalhoub. Watch for the sequence where Murray is waiting behind a lady at a convenience store – it may be the most exquisitely suspenseful moment ever committed to film.

This is certainly one of Bill Murray’s best movies, released about six years after Ghostbusters. It’s also the only movie Murray ever directed – or at least co-directed with Howard Franklin. It should have been a smash. I have no idea why it didn’t set the box office on fire.

#4) Kenneth Branagh’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Shakespeare movies don’t usually work well, because Shakespeare, for all his talent, wasn’t much of a screenwriter. Film is a visual medium – people need to do things, not just talk about them. In contrast, Shakespeare had no scenery, so he had to dress the stage with his words. His plays are filled with speeches that describe places and landscapes in the minutest detail. That’s part of the reason why an unedited Shakespeare play can run for well over four hours.

In this movie, Branagh slices and dices the original text without mercy. I’d bet that only about a tenth of Shakespeare’s original language survives into the screenplay. That’s not to say Branagh doesn’t have respect for his source material. Instead, he understands the differences between film and the stage, and he somehow manages to lift the essence of the play into the new medium essentially unaltered. It’s an accomplishment equivalent to what Peter Jackson did with the unwieldy Lord of the Rings books. In both cases, the adaptation is worthy of the original work.

Of course, by saying that, I make this film sound hoity-toity, which it definitely is not. It’s bawdy, silly, and funny as all crap. It moves. You don’t have to like Shakespeare to enjoy this, and it’s not at all difficult for a modern audience to understand. The cast is phenomenal – Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, Michael Keaton, Robert Sean Leonard, and Branagh himself – everyone except Keanu Reeves, who, for some reason, keeps getting cast in epic period pieces while still sounding like Ted “Theodore” Logan. Whoa.

I think this film just got lost in the Branagh Shakespeare shuffle. Instead, his audacious debut in Henry V usually gets a lot of attention, and deservedly so, as does his bloated, tedious Hamlet, which makes all the self-important Shakespearean movie mistakes that Much Ado scrupulously avoids. It reverently uses all of the original Hamlet script without a single edit, and it’s a four-hour snoozefest. If you really want to see Hamlet on film, the Mel Gibson movie isn’t bad. But the Much Ado movie is much, much better.

#3) THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS

Steve Martin has been a fixture in the mainstream movie firmament for so long that it’s easy to forget that at the beginning of his film career, he was a box office disaster four times in a row. After the starmaking success of his film debut in The Jerk, Martin made a series of really weird movies. There was the lip synch musical Pennies from Heaven, the film noir parody Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and a study in self flagellation called The Lonely Guy.

And then there was The Man With Two Brains.

This is certainly one of the strangest movies ever released by a major studio. It’s filled with glorious non sequiters, from Martin’s character name – Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr – to the surreal “murmur” sequence to its climactic Merv Griffin cameo. From beginning to end, it dares to be majestically odd. It presumably failed because it was written specifically to entertain me, so it’s no surprise that no one else gets it.

#2) WAITING FOR GUFFMAN

Also known as Spinal Tap for Theatre Geeks, this Christopher Guest mockumentary is the first and best of the improv, pseudo-Tap ensemble films that followed. The same cast appears in Best In Show and A Mighty Wind, both of which are also pretty funny, and For Your Consideration, which, in my considered opinion, blows.

Yet Guffman remains Guest’s comedy gold standard, with laughs aplenty. Don’t get me started on beans! You want me to strike this? There ain’t no swimmin’ in my show. My wife, Bonnie – I buy most of her clothes. Midnight at the Oasis! Backdraft – the Musical! Gather ‘round, for I have news! Working! Working! Never stopping, never sleeping! Working! Making! Some for selling, some for keeping!

If none of those lines made you laugh, then you need to see this movie. Trust me, they will.

It also has a hysterical soundtrack, written by Guest and his Spinal Tap compadres. You get all this and some My Dinner with Andre action figures and a Remains of the Day lunchbox besides! Only Spinal Tap is a funnier Guest comedy, but I don’t need to recommend that one, because you’ve already seen it.

#1) SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER

This is at the top of my list of the best movies you’ve never seen, but it’s also very close to the top of my list of best movies, period. (So is Foodleking’s choice of Chariots of Fire, but, again, you’ve seen that one, so it doesn’t make this list.)

This is a sweet, gentle movie that explores the inherent tension between excellence and decency. Can you be really, really good at something and still be a good person? It poses this dilemma without being remotely preachy, and the lesson comes against the unlikeliest of backdrops – the world of children’s competitive chess tournaments. That sounds excruciatingly boring, yet it never is. I know next to nothing about chess, but this movie managed to keep me enthralled. Along with everything else, it’s a classic Rocky-style sports movie with a minimum of schmaltz. It’s heartfelt without being sentimental, which is something that only a handful of movies has ever achieved.

Great performances from a great cast – Joe Montegna, Joan Allen, Laurence Fishburne, and a transcendent Ben Kingsley in his finest role. Yes, you heard me. That includes Gandhi. (Although I think the Gandhi movie was overrated, but that’s a story for another day.) This movie also boasts something exceptionally rare in a Hollywood film – credible children’s performances. Young Max Pomeranc, as child chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, could not be any further removed from Macauley Culkin. That’s one of the main reasons this movie works so well.

And, for those of you who go in for this sort of thing, it’s probably the most beautifully photographed movie I’ve ever seen. You don’t have to know anything about cinematography to recognize just how visually brilliant this picture is.

I first saw this movie before I became a father. Now, over a decade and five children later, the father-son relationship at the center of this movie is far more poignant to me than it was when I first saw the film.

If you haven’t seen it, put this at the top of your Netflix queue. Or, better yet, go buy it. You’ll want to watch it more than once.

________

POST-SCRIPT

Reviewing this list, I discover I’ve recommended three R-rated films to you. That actually helps explain why these movies failed, as R-rated movies are far more likely to underperform at the box office. Since most Mormons – including me – tend to avoid R-rated movies as a rule, some further explanation is necessary.

I remember an interview with Bill Murray about Quick Change, where he complained that the movie should have gotten a PG-13 rating, since it has no sex and no real violence to speak of. The ratings board told him if he’d just drop one of the F-words – I think the movie has three of them – he could drop the R. He debated whether or not to change Jason Robards line “It’s a f%$#ing car horn” to “it’s a car horn,” and decided the cleaner line wouldn’t have been as funny. I think he was wrong – the line isn’t that funny either way – and that extra F gave him the R which cost him a hit.

Guffman is a G-rated movie except for two scenes – one where Catharine O’Hara gets drunk and starts talking about her husband’s penis-size-reduction operation, which would push the rating up to a PG-13 at most – and then a ten-second audition scene where an unassuming local schlub tries out for the community play with a wildly profane excerpt from the movie Taxi Driver, much to the horror of everyone watching. It’s a very funny scene precisely because the profanity is so inappropriate to the situation. It’s also an easy scene to skip. As soon as the guy announces his monologue, just press the fast forward for a couple of seconds and you’ll be fine.

The last time I saw The Man With Two Brains was on television with all the naughty bits edited out. That’s probably the best way to watch this movie. When I first saw it, I wasn’t too concerned about morality in movies. Now that I’m an old prude, I’d likely be more offended. I honestly don’t remember the stuff the TV version left out, and it’s probably better that way.

Both Much Ado About Nothing and Searching for Bobby Fischer are PG-rated movies, not even PG-13, yet Bobby Fischer is the more family friendly of the two. The thing people in Much Ado are making much ado about is a suspicion of sexual infidelity, which turns out to be nothing. (Hence the title.) It contains the line “She knows the heat of a luxurious bed!” which went clear over the heads of young’uns and the MPAA ratings board.

You can watch Searching for Bobby Fischer with your priest, rabbi, or bishop without feeling remotely embarrassed.

That is all.

Both vouchers and the Republican in the Salt Lake City Mayor's race are losing by over 30 points.

But the Jordan School District split looks like it's going to pass. Huzzah!

This is boring you, so I'll stop now.

I'm not sure why. I had a heckuva time getting this thing posted this morning. And now comments don't seem to be working.

I have no solutions. Only angst. The story of my life, really.

A lifelong friend of mine, with whom I disagree on many ideological issues, recently wrote an impassioned defense of communism.

I quote relevant excerpts:

It troubles me immensely that there is no organized Communist power to oppose the complete capitalist depredation of discourse and the world.

And people have been so brainwashed by capitalist propaganda, and the reaction against communism is so kneejerk that it just demonstrates the complete idiocy of 99% of my fellows.

Please, don't bore me with your glib statements of "Communism is tyranny..." blah blah blah...

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that the Communist State was anything approaching ideal.

But on the other hand, some of the literature of the Communists is not only brilliant, it's extremely rational and logical. To anyone with a logical mind, it's very convincing...

Christ, for those who aren't aware, was a Communist. He advocated people selling all they had to give to the poor (a Robin Hood figure if there ever were one), and said that in his society, the have-nots would have everything the greedy have's had, in a complete, topsy-turvy shake-down of society. Jesus was a revolutionary.

That doesn't mean that I wanted to live in Russia. But I still want to listen to that era of Russia (and the larger Communist world), because I know that liberation cannot come without that dialogue, because they hold one of the pieces. They may very well be missing many of the pieces, but that they hold one or some of the pieces I know for certain.

I look forward to a day when these sorts of things can be discussed openly, publicly, and joyously in the United States without having some Fox News-rabble repeat the joyless ad nauseums of their John Birch demagogues.

I tried to post this response at his myspace page, but it didn't work. So, since I wasted so much time writing it, I post it here for your amusement.

________________

A few thoughts from a right-wing loon, offered in a playful and non-ideological spirit…

COMMUNISM IS TYRANNY!! BLAH BLAH BLAH!

Phew. Now that that’s out of the way…

Besides being a right-wing loon, I’m also a lifelong Mormon, and it may surprise you to learn that Mormons were initially criticized for their communitarian leanings. Joseph Smith, the first president of the Church, instituted a communal society with what came to be known as the United Order.

The idea was that members gave all of their wealth to the Church, which then returned to each member a “stewardship,” which they were to manage for the good of the community as a whole, with all surplus wealth generated to be returned to the Church for the benefit of the poor. The system was similar to what the early apostles attempted in the Book of Acts, and, according to additional LDS revelations, it was the law of Zion , in which people were “of one heart and one mind…and there were no poor among them.” (Moses 7:18)

It was a great idea. And it didn’t work.

Despite having the force of divine law behind it, the United Order was not backed up by the law of the land. As a result, when people decided they wanted to keep their own wealth, thank you very much, there wasn’t a whole lot the church could do about it. And once people started pulling out, the system collapsed.

And why did people start pulling out? Predictable reasons. You can call it greed or selfishness if you like. Many of them thought the Church was mismanaging their resources, and they thought they could do a better job. At times, they were probably right. Every community is made up of imperfect people, and when somebody has to make the decision as to how resources are to be dispensed, somebody else is going to disagree.

It’s important to note that the United Order differed from Marxism/Leninism in three key areas:

Members of the United Order, while accountable to the community as a whole, still preserved a measure of private property ownership, whereas Marxism requires all property to be owned by the state.
The United Order was only binding with regard to the faith of the participants, who could leave the Order without fear of governmental reprisal. Marxism, as practiced by the Soviets et al, is preserved by the military power of the state.
The United Order was predicated on each participant’s faith in the divine, whereas Marxism, by its very definition, is militantly atheistic.

So where am I going with all this?

When you say “Jesus was a Communist,” I think you’re absolutely right in the traditional, non-ideological definition of the term – i.e. he believed in building an economic community where all are equal and there are no poor among us. I would say that he was encouraging us to live the United Order. To say, however, that Jesus was a Marxist would be fundamentally incorrect. Certainly he would not have approved of an economic system that mandated the wholesale rejection of God.

Communitarian living is the divine ideal, but it only works when governed by divine principles. When a perfect person is the one who decides how resources are distributed without bias or self-interest, and everyone is in the order voluntarily and participating wholeheartedly, than a United Order works perfectly. But when real, imperfect people get involved, and when communitarian living is enforced at the end of a gun, you get big, messy, and, yes, bloody problems.

You state several times that you’re not defending the vile excesses of the Soviet state, and I ought to state that I am in no way ignorant of the weaknesses of capitalism. I feel about capitalism the way Winston Churchill felt about democracy, which he called “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

If you doubt this, reflect on the fact that this simple discussion would be impossible in Soviet Russia. To express grave doubts about your own government in a public forum would be to invite imprisonment and death. For all its faults, the United States still allows you to criticize her without fear of reprisal. That, in and of itself, sets us apart from the Communist world.

Hope I haven’t ticked you off, and that you feel better soon!

Stallion Cornell's Moist Blog

About Me

Friday, November 30, 2007

Basketball for the Very Young

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Los Pescados

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Moist Blog: The First 100 Years

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Our Christmas Letter

Monday, November 26, 2007

Christmas Music

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Weird Hymns

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thanksgiving '07: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Yams

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Beware Authors of Our Own Lives

Monday, November 19, 2007

Election '08: Less is Morris

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Facebook

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Languatron: Anatomy of a Wuss-Out

Friday, November 16, 2007

How to Spend Taxpayer Money

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Hey, Languatron!

Government Funded Cheese

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Worms of Hell

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

DC or Bust!

Monday, November 12, 2007

What Would Jesus Eat?

Friday, November 9, 2007

Links

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Batman's Temporary Death

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

The Five Best Movies You've Never Seen

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Election Night in Utah

The Blogger software is freaking out

Mormon Communists