If I Were a Child Actor, I’d be Billy Mumy

Fortunately my long absence hasn’t been due to a deep-space screw-up by Dr. Smith. Of course I don’t have a robot sidekick to hang out with either, and goodness knows there isn’t a tech geek that wouldn’t love to have one of those.

So it probably goes without saying that I’ve been busy. Busy busy busy. But it’s been a good busy, and I’ve been having very positive things happen in my life. Let me recap what has been the best thing to happen to me in a while…

In Columbus we have this great thing called Skybus. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a discount airline that sells seats for as little as $10 each way. My mom and I had scored some of those really cheap seats to go visit my brother while he was doing an internship at Microsoft last year, and so when a new block of seats went on sale last September I determined that I would grab a cheap seat for a trip to Los Angeles. In January. Yep, I booked five months in advance for a trip out west just because it was exceedingly cheap.

So fast-forward to January and I nearly cancelled my trip because I didn’t have any real plans for anything to do out there, and since the ticket had been so cheap it didn’t really matter. But something just wouldn’t let me do it. A little something in me kept saying I should take the trip, and a family that used to live in our area found out I was headed their direction and invited me to stay with them. Free room and board, so I was set.

Meanwhile, around Christmas I had joined eHarmony. It was like a switch flipped in me and I was ready to journey into the world of experimental non-singleness again. Sure, I’d dipped my toe in the water a couple times over the past few years, but with only mixed success. I liked eHarmony though, and how it handled matches and so forth. Very much more a service, rather than feeling like I was hanging out in an online bar trying to attract people with pithy comments.

So yeah, I met someone on there. Several someones actually, but one of them in particular I was being a bit more chatty with. She lived in Las Vegas, but I really wasn’t minding because retty much everyone I was matching with was in and around the Utah area. Limiting yourself to “only Latter-Day Saints” seems to do that. Then a couple days before heading out to L.A. on my little excursion I got a lesson in west coast geography and learned that L.A. and Vegas really aren’t all that far apart. So I dropped a quick note about how I was flying out there in two days and if she was interested it might be fun to get together somewhere.

Get together we did, and had a nice time, if not slightly overwhelming. The other Mormon’s in the room will be the one’s to appreciate this, but because of a previously scheduled ward outing, I wound up being invited to join in a trip up to the Vegas temple. To do sealings. For a first date. Everyone assumed we were married, which was only slightly awkward (a lot) but we both had a good sense of humor about it. Then we had dinner with her one sister and brother-in-law that also live in Vegas, whose house I then crashed at for the night. In the morning her brother-in-law invited me to help with an Elder’s quorum move, so I went. Why not? It was just all kind of surreal, so I was just going with it.

And the weird thing was that, though it all caught me a bit off guard, I like it. Most guys in that situation would have found a door as quick as they could, never looked back, and never called again. And while I did eventually excuse myself back to L.A. later that day and got my head around what an over-the-top first date it all was, I was by no means wanting to pretend it never happened and close that chapter.

We’ve talked since then. A lot. Every day or two, for hours at a time. She’s visited out here since then. My kids love her, and so does my family. I’m headed out there in a couple weeks to meet more of hers. Probably in shifts since she’s one of sixteen kids, which is nearly impossible for me to fathom. The thought of one person having that many kids makes my uterus scream in anguish, and I’m a guy. Guys don’t have a uterus after all, and yet somehow I have one in phantom form that’s just screaming at the top of its lungs. Go figure. But from what I’ve gotten to know of her family so far it obvioulsy has worked very well for them.

So I seem to be on a good path here. Someone I really get that really gets me, shares the same values, probably has more experience raising kids than me given that she’s number five of the Family von Trapp, and isn’t a closeted lesbian. Like I said, we’ve been talking a lot, which accounts for me not being around here much. Hard to type up an entry when you’re on the phone until midnight since the other person is three hours behind.

All in all I’m feeling pretty good with things. There are some other things brewing too, but I can cover those later. No midnight calls tonight, but I do need to get some catching-up sleep from the others I’ve had recently.

So, Billy Graham and Gordon B. Hinckley Decide to Throw a Christmas Party Together…

I’ve been busy this week. Really…freaking…busy. Yes, with work. And not in a bad way. I’ve been coding up a demo for an executive board presentation and loving every minute of doing it.

Right right…I’m an experience designer and not a developer officially. Doesn’t mean I don’t still have the strong skills, and frankly I think a really good UI experience designer should know how to do this stuff. How can you tell someone what you want built if you don’t have some notion of doing it yourself?

Anyway, by Friday I was ready for the weekend. I wanted to unwind, hit up a couple of activities I planned to attend, and write something here (which I need to make the time to do a little more frequently in a week). Friday night was just about having dinner with a small group of others that have had to deal with a spouse going gay on them. I don’t go much because, frankly, people that go are usually pretty new and therefore feeling pretty raw, or have been coming for a while because they’re “still angry, after all these years”.

Wait, that’s not quite how Paul Simon puts it, is it?

I’m not a person who holds on to anger much at all really, so hanging out regularly with angry people just doesn’t work for me. I do want to be supportive, but I have my limits.

Saturday’s activity seemed to hold more promise though. The Single Adults on the southern side of the city (the better of the programs in our quad-stake area) were having an open house social, follwed by a trip to the local ward to view some nativity stuff. “Excellent!” I thought. Get out of the home, meet some new people, do a little socializing, and engage in some of the festiveness of third-trimester Hallowchristmagiving.

Parts one through three of that plan went reasonably well. Again, nobody in my demographic was in attendance, unless I was looking for a hot time involving a trip to the local Ponderosa followed by an evening of stories about someone’s cats. All nice people, certainly. Just not dating material. But it was still good to get out.

So then part four, checking out the nativity displays. At least I thought the information said “displays” in the plural. I’m still confused. Because this is the part where things went sideways for me, and at least figuratively Billy Graham took over at the local ward. Because what we were going to see was a live nativity performance.

This wasn’t your typical, Mormon roadshow style performance either. Someone in that ward obviously has some sort of theatrical background if not a job in the theatre. This was a performance done in scenes, with staging, sets, and props both inside and outside the building. Thirty to forty people in the ward were involved in the performance. It was a big deal.

But it left me feeling really, really awkward. A kind of “What the hell was that doing in a Mormon building?” kind of awkward.

We were effectively being led on a tour of Bethlehem around the birth of Jesus. So starting in the “Israelite marketplace” in the cultural hall was all well and good. Watching Joseph and Mary and their donkey (yes, a real, live donkey) walking outside to the inn was okay too.

But then we got the the shepherds in something of a culvert on the one side of the church property. With a live fire roaring. And a flag pole with a star on top and a stuffed angel perched on the top of a ladder. Live with me for a moment the thoughts that went through my head when the narrator told us about the angel appearing to the shepherds in the field:

Wait a damn minute, that angel isn’t stuffed! It’s a live person! And he’s got a stage mic booming over a speker system outside when the gun light hits him! What the hell?!

I was pretty flabbergasted and embarassed. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. I don’t know. But there were Elders there and this was a missionary activity, with non-members in attendance. This was like bringing an investigator to church for the first time on a Fast Sunday when someone gets up and starts going on about how the Spirit revealed to them which of the stars in the sky is Kolob.

True story from my mission, by the way.

The next stop was the manger scene, back inside the church (thank goodness, because my bald head was absolutely freezing by this time). The scene is surrounded by people that are supposed to be angels, representing different periods of time. So of course there are vikings, Musketeers, and a nun. A nun, inside a Mormon church.

None of it prepared me for the last scene though. The final scene was staged in the chapel, which had been prepped to be the ancient, Jewish temple. Including pillars and a Mennorah on the pulpit. The men playing the parts of the temple elders were going through the rituals of kissing the robes, wearing praryer boxes, and enacting the blessing of children.

I was stunned.

I get that it was all meant to be a semi-accurate depiction of the events as they really took place. I know that there was nothing that wasn’t scriptural on display. So maybe I’m just a bit out of touch, and stuff like this has been done in other congregations, but I just didn’t know what to make of this. At all. I was so overwhelmed by how out of sorts this all was with my world view that I didn’t feel the Spirit in it. And when the performance was over and everyone was heading for refreshments, I headed for the door and left.

I didn’t start life as a Mormon. My mom joined the church when I was seven years old. Up until then, if and when we went to church, we were Presbyterian. My friends growing up were of other denominations, mostly evangelicals. And this was the sort of thing I was used to seeing in their congregations. It felt really weird to see that in one of our own buildings.

One of these days though, I’m just sure I’ll come away from a Single Adult activity thinking what a great time it was and how it met all my hopes. Of course, by then, I’ll probably be sixty and being happy with the activity will make sense.

*sigh*

Job Opening: Must Be Proficient With Hammers and Children

The third trimester of Hallowchristmagiving is almost over, and the tryptophan is wearing off. So what to do next? Dream of the Big Dance, of course. Do the shopping, trim the tree, fire up the oven (yes, I do my own baking…and I’m good at it), and dream of having a "special someone" with which to share a smooch under the mistletoe.

Add all that together, and this morning’s conversation with my youngest makes complete sense. Not that we haven’t had these conversations before, but when I’m wishing there were someone with whom I could share a couch, a blanket, some popcorn, and a movie it’s just a little more poignant.

(Oh, and bear in mind that my youngest, "Z", is all of five years old)

Z: When are you going to get married again?

M: I don’t know. I’m not even dating anyone. (My last date was back in March)

Z: I know.

M: Do you want me to get married again?

Z: Yeah. And when you get married again, then I’ll have a step-mom, right?

M: Yep. Are you wanting a step-mom?

Z: Uh-huh. And when I do, she’ll be happy to play "Break the Ice" with me, won’t she?

The answer, of course, was "absolutely". We then broke into our own round of games for a half-hour or so before church. The great things about playing the game with her are the interesting house rules and hammer techniques. Does the big block with the bear go in the middle of the field, or more toward one side? Do you carefully tap a block out, smash it with one stroke, or use the hammer in more unconventional ways?

Whatever style of play one might prefer, I think it’s a pretty good quality to look for. And not just because it’s my daughter’s favorite game. I like it too, after all.

Sympathy for the Devil

Actually, the Stones song in Guitar Hero III is “Paint it Black”. I finally picked up an X-Box 360 the other day along with GH3. I’m giving it to the family (i.e. me and the kids) at Thanksgiving so everyone can play along with all the extended family. I had to break it all out and test it while the kids weren’t here though. Of course. Had to make sure everything was in working order and all. Good thing too, because the wireless guitar controller I originally got didn’t work, which was disappointing.

GH3 is an excellent game, with perhaps one exception. There’s a bit of a cartoony story line, and the rockers wind up on the wrong side of the devil. Typical rocker theme, for sure. Except the devil isn’t usually portayed as a fatter, sunglasses-wearing Wolverine wannabe. He just wasn’t an imposing devil figure.

But then what is the nature of the devil anyway? Or the origin of evil for that matter? I was driving to work last week and through some odd chain of thought or another my mind wound up on this track, along with one of those insights where a person has a bit of a smack-the-forehead “well of course that’s it” moment.

Another primer for the non-Mormons in the room. The Book of Mormon is a book of scripture we read in companionship with the Bible. Both are sacred scripture to us. And in one of the first books in the Book of Mormon, known as Second Nephi, is this bit of knowledge:

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh ; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life , through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

Eternal life to us means much more than just living forever. It’s about living forever in the presence of God, with our families. Family is an intrinsic part  of salvation from our perspective. For me, an eternity without my children would really…well…suck. My “aha” moment started to come with a clarity on an emotional as well as cognitive level of just how badly my former mother-in-law had blown that all to hell for Brokeback’s entire family. That entire family turned away from the gospel and from God in general. They all determined that if God didn’t agree with their choices, then He must be wrong.

That brought about the second half of my “aha”, and an understanding of the nature of Satan that I hadn’t had before. The last part of that scripture reference says “might be miserable like unto himself”, and is something that I’d heard innumerable times since I was a kid. But the meaning of it finally hit home completely. Brokeback’s mom couldn’t admit that any of her kids were doing anything wrong. And what’s the one way to make yourself feel better about your position when you can’t admit that you’re wrong about it? Why, get others to agree with you, of course. If you have numbers on your side, then of course you must be right.

It’s a simple school-yard mentality really. If I can get enough people, especially key people, to agree with my position regadless of how cockamamy it may be, then I must be right. Everybody in Brokeback’s family bought into it, and I keep vigil with my kids to do my best to help keep them from being sucked in. But in the bigger perspective, that’s all Satan really is too. God kicked him out, and he just couldn’t admit he was wrong. It’s not that Satan spends him time saying “I’m going to go get people to commit some evil today, because evil is cool!” He’s just stewing over being wrong. Knowing deep down that he’s wrong. But being way, way too prideful to admit it to himself. And so instead he tries to get people to agree with him. Or at the very least to disagree with God’s position. Because then that, of course, would prove that he’s right.

Then again, he might pull some evil sometimes just because it’s fun. I just finished watching Dancing With The Stars, and one of the couples did a routine to The Cure’s “Why Can’t I Be You”. Sung by the house band. And an evil joke is the only explanation I can imagine to explain what I heard.

Hunting Sasquatch Without a Gun

It’s been ten days, and a do have a few stories to tell about. I was going to write a post exclusively about how cute and awesome all my kids were for the last day of the first trimester of Hallochristmagiving. But that is so last week now (literally). So suffice to say that they were all awesome, and it was hysterical to watch a whole crowd of kids streaming across someone’s half-acre front yard in costume. Looked like something out of one of my favorite movies, only less gruesome. So now that I’m out of my candy-induced coma, it’s time to get a little more current.

Time for another quick primer to bring those non-Mormons in the crowd. Our church is divided up similarly to other churches, but with slightly different names. Our congregations are called Wards, or in the case of small congregations Branches. A collection of Branches and Wards is called a Stake. Multiple Stakes comprise a region. All the regions together are the Church at large. Twice a year, each congregation has a special set of meetings called a conference. Same at the Stake and Church levels too. Got it? Good.

So today was Stake Conference in my area. Well, last night too, counting the Saturday evening session. At the Saturday evening session I wasn’t sure where I was going to sit. I walked in looking around for anyone I might know so I wouldn’t feel like a complete dork sitting by myself. This morning, no big deal. Walked in and there was a good friend with his wife and kids and an extra spot. But last night there were plenty of open spaces next to lots of people I just flat-out didn’t know. And then I spotted one with some members from the Single Adult committee. Saved, if not at least a bit uncomfortably so. One of the sisters on the committee might be referred to as “awkward”, “different”, or “at least mildly off-balance”.

Once I was settled in, it was a little easier to relax and just look around to see who else was there. And what I realized was that there were lots of single people. Though most were below the minimum threshhold set for me by my oldest daughter. I’m not allowed to date anyone younger than 30 by her rules, since anyone younger would be too uncomfortably young to think of in a motherly capacity. I don’t have the heart (or the nerve) to point out that even someone at 30 would only have been 15 at the time she was conceived. If I ever did mention it, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to date anyone under 50. Not that it really matters as I haven’t been on a date since March. But I digress.

So I notice that there are lots of single people around at least in their twenties. And I’m pretty sure that there were others there in the “acceptable dating age” range. But with all the icky married people there, sitting with the single people they’ve taken under their wings, it was impossible to tell them apart. They were utterly, socially camouflaged. Conference in itself was enjoyable enough, sure. But knowing that Sasquatch were out there, hiding and likely not even knowing they were so completely invisible, was a frustrating experience.

In an effort to bring the Sasquatch out of hiding, I’ve stepped up my efforts to fill my calling in the Single Adult committee. I’ve volunteered to take on the responsibility of compiling the list of activities for all the surrounding stakes and circulate them so that everyone will know what’s going on. We’re really, really terrible in two areas when it comes to Single Adult activities: (a) having them and (b) letting people know when we’re having them. I’ve just grown tired of there not being any good way to socially meet people in general, and seeing that there are single people sitting in the same chapel and not getting together to have a good time just tears it.

I just don’t want to get fooled like the guy that took this picture though. He thought he might have found a Sasquatch, but the experts have said it’s just a bear with mange. I don’t need another one of those though. Brokeback was enough of that. She even tried to take my picnic basket when she left to be with another mangy bear.

The one "A" is for "Ambiguous"

Yesterday was the twenty-third day of Hallochristmagiving, and by odd coincidence the gift for the day was “twenty-three dollars to purchase ‘Fido’ from Best Buy. It was perfect because I had been looking forward to picking this movie up since I first read about it this past summer.

You see…I am a fan of zombie films.

What’s important to understand about that statement is the unwritten word “good”. I am a fan of good zombie films. There are honestly loads of bad zombie films. And I’ve seen a few of them unwittingly. They are poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted, and tend to focus on entrails and breasts. They have no story and no message. They are, in a word, crap.

I’m sure many of you are already re-reading that last paragraph and thinking “Good zombie films with a story and a message? What’s this guy smoking?” The answer to that, of course, is nothing. Read the previous post about the Word of Wisdom. I live by it. The truth is that I’m utterly serious. There are good zombie films out there. They are smartly done and very entertaining without being exploitative. They carry strong social messages and deep insight. “Fido” is one of those films. It’s a Lassie movie with the collie being replaced by a flesh-eating corpse.

Those Mormons in the crowd might now be saying to themselves “But hey, Finite Monkey Guy, aren’t zombie films all rated ‘R’? And doesn’t the church teach that you shouldn’t be watching those?” Guilty as charged. I do own (and watch) a select few movies toting an ‘R’ rating. And I have some quandries over it. Not the least of which is how the heck do the people in the MPAA come up with their ratings?

Certainly many movies with an ‘R’ rating richly deserve them. And I don’t go to see those. Like “Super-Bad”. The title pretty much sums up all I need to know to make an informed decision about not watching that film. Any of the Freddie or Jason flicks. Boobies and blood. Not where I want to be. But then there are those like “Fido” where I watch them and come away wondering whether anyone actually watched the film before rating it, or just saw the word zombie and rubber-stamped it. I wonder because, aside from a blood spatter when a zombie is shot in the head to put it down (the traditional way — trust no other) there is absolutely nothing, and I do mean nothing, offensive in the movie. Not one single curse word. Not even of the mildest variety. No boobies. No entrails. Only a wink and nod piece of innuendo. Prime-time television has more in it to offend the innocent than this movie, especially if it’s a night that an episode of CSI or Law & Order is on. So any given night of the week, really.

“Fido” is a light zombie-comedy that, dare I say, could almost be a family film.

Compare that with something PG-13 like, say, “Blades of Glory” from earlier this year. A film which starred Jon Heder, Mormon actor and star of “Napoleon Dynamite”. That film was loaded with straight-up references to sex, let alone innuendo, along with drug and drinking references, vomit, bathroom jokes, and Will Ferrell walking around in underwear. How is that less offensive? How does all that require a less mature individual than watching “Fido”? I mean, aside from the maturity of those writing it of course. Really when you think about it, even the ‘G’-rated fare of Disney is loaded with wink-and-nod references to the burgeoning sexuality of their nubile female characters.

Other cases like this led me to the conclusion long ago that, in many ways, I just can’t trust the MPAA and their movie ratings system. I need to be more active in checking the commercials and trailers, along with checking viewer comments on movie sites and paying close attention to the explanations that began accompanying the ratings not so long ago. All together, those cues have been immensely helpful in avoiding many ‘PG’ and ‘PG-13′ movies that contain plenty of material I don’t care to see. The same cues have also let me feel not completely guilty about watching a few ‘R’ films as well. I feel like I either need to take that approach to movies now, or give them up completely because I’ll never know what I might get hit with.

So, Kanye actually left me a note that for the twenty-fourth day of Hallochristmagiving the verse should be something involving “ho’s”. I told him I could see my way clear only if they were undead and fully clothed.

I call it "The Amy Winehouse Effect"

Have you ever come away from a session of surfing the Internet, looking at train wrecks in Hollywood and elsewhere, and thought “Damn, we’re way too connected”?

I have. Several times. And I’ve come to call this “The Amy Winehouse Effect”.

Why Amy in particular? Why not Brit-Brit, or LiLo, or Paris, or one of the dozen other celebrity ho-bags? Why do I use Amy Winehouse as my touchstone? It’s simple. She, unlike the others, has actual talent.

I had at first rejected the notion of buying her “Back to Black” album. I mean, c’mon, the big hit is about how “they” (seemingly meaning “everyone”) tried to get her to go into a rehab program for substance abuse and she told them all to pound sand. Not your typical role model of the week. It just seemed too trashy. Too low-brow. Like I would be supporting someone who needed to get their life turned around rather than lauded. Like…like…uh…geez, that song’s really kind of catchy.

In a moment of weakness, and an effort to add some current material to my music collection by joining BMG, I ordered the album. I’ve had it for over a month now, and it seems I listen to part or all of it pretty much daily. It’s on the verge of being a joke. But it’s just that good. Sure, she has some inappropriate language. Not Eminem calibre, but it’s there. What she also has is an amazing voice, and honest-to-goodness real instrumentation and composition in her songs. Much of the album doesn’t even have a guitar. You listen to it and can easily imagine hearing exactly this same performance live, in an intimate club setting, exactly as it’s meant to be.

And when I realized all of that, I immediately saw just what all this connectedness of the Internet had done to me. Done to all of us. It has been collectively tainting our souls by making it a popular sport to find as much fault in each other, and especially the famous, as possible.

Amy Winehouse, for all her troubles (and they are legion), isn’t any worse in how she is conducting her life than many of those famous musicians and artists that preceded her. Led Zeplin were known to have done some incredibly outrageous and drug-fueled things in their day. John Bonham died from his excesses after all. As did Hendrix and others. The Beatles attained many of their sounds while under the influence. Go back far enough and you’ll find Mozart largely inebriated throughout his genius.

This isn’t to say that what any of these people did was right. Again a quick tutorial for those non-Mormons: we believe in a little thing we call the “Word of Wisdom”. The long and the short of it is no alcohol, no drugs, no coffee, no tea, and no smoking. Along with the no sex outside of marriage, some people think we must be more dull than a convention of chartered accountants, but really we’re quite enjoyable to be around and in an awkward moment make for superb designated drivers. So I by no means condone chemically altering one’s brain in the name of art. However, that isn’t to say that the resultant art can’t still be appreciated. And what’s more, when all of these people created their art the entire world wasn’t blathering on daily to each other about how trashy the artists’ lives were outside their work. The odd story would crop up, like the John Lennon “bigger than Jesus” comment, but it wasn’t constantly on the nightly news.

Can you imagine what it would have been like had the Internet existed in late 1800’s France? How many people would have been relentless in their pursuit of the distasteful details surrounding the crazed ravings of Vincent van Gogh? And how much more or less likely would it have been that the world would then be able to recognize the beauty in his unfortunate insanity? He would more likely have been turned into tabloid fodder and ground under the heel of a society consumed in its desire to point at those less respectable than themselves in a vain effort to feel superior. Which likely wouldn’t have changed his outcome other than to hasten his inevitable end.

So all that’s said to get to this: Amy Winehouse is a wreck, but I don’t care. The fact that I nearly let the Internet and tabloid gossip machine prevent me from listening to (and legally owning let’s not forget) one of the most enjoyable albums I’ve had in a long, long time is depressing to me. My career is focused around the capabilities of the Internet, and the gossip machine is one of those abilities that really taints it for me. It’s like renting a herse for a family trip. Sure I’m using it for honorable pusposes, but I can’t shake the thought of the bodies its buried which kind of ruins the experience.

We need to stop turning into a bunch of Romans looking for the next spectacle. People need to stop digging dirt for fun and sport. More importantly, I want Amy Winehouse to get her life in order so she doesn’t wind up dead from an overdose. Because she needs to make another album. I’ll buy it when she does.

What to Have the Divorced Guy Teach at Church

Okay, I swear that I’m not just a once-a-week kind of blogger. I’ve just been busy is all. Lots of stuff with work and hanging out with the kids…by the end of the day I’m tired. Look, I’m writing a blog entry right now so you know I mean it when I say I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be better.

*choke*

Seriously though. I’ve got to get better with sitting down for twenty minutes every couple days and putting my thoughts together.

So here’s another quick Mormon culture backgrounder. Our Sunday services are divided into three (count ‘em) hour-long blocks. First the main service, then the adults do Sunday school followed by separate classes for the men and the women. The kids have their own classes during those last two hours. In Sunday school there are just one or two people assigned to teach, and they do a great job. In the separate classes though, people take turns. In our men’s class specifically, we have a few assigned to teach lessons on a rotating basis.

It is here that my small story begins. It’s all about how the person in charge needs to take a bit more into account when handing out the assignments than just “one for you, and one for you, and one for you” or the results can get uncomfortable. Specifically for me. But at least in a humorous way, because I so happen to have a deep-seated sense of humor. Without it I would have cracked a long time ago.

So I’ve been assigned to teach three times this year. The assignments came well in advance, which (another Mormon culture backgrounder) is something of a shocker. My lesson assignments for the year:

•  Mother’s Day
• The Law of Chastity
• The Prophet Joseph Smith

Obviously, as the divorced guy in the room, the Mother’s Day lesson is tricky right out of the gate. What would one say? And especially under such particular circumstances as having an ex who has switched teams? Fortunately, I dodged a bullet on that one and class was cancelled so that everyone could participate in doing other things to help the women in the church for Mother’s Day. Whew.

“The Law of Chastity” is a phrase that we Mormon’s are very accustomed to hearing but that tends to elicit more of a deer in the headlights stare from outsiders. In more secular terms it might be phrased as “Not Doing Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You (In Bed)”. Again, as the divorced guy in the room, this is a totally awkward topic, and a bullet that I did not dodge. I’m a guy who doesn’t believe in sex outside of marriage, so the last thing I want to do is talk about sex outside of marriage. Or sex at all really. I’m devout, but I’m not dead, so a topic like this is really just rubbing salt in the wound.

The one thing that made it all easier to take was remembering that I was originally assigned to teach the following lesson, but those in charge realized that “Having a Successful Marriage” might be a bit much to expect of me. Not that they thought I couldn’t do a good job, but I’m sure the possibility of my saying “The first step in having a good marriage is not hooking up with a closeted lesbian” crossed a couple of minds. Not that I would have said it, but pretty much everyone at church figured out a long time ago what happened and it would have gotten one heck of a laugh if I did.

So that leaves my last lesson of the year. Talking about Joseph Smith really ought to be a fine lesson in and of itself. My humor in this one comes from the fact that the lesson will be on Veteran’s Day, which oddly enough is the anniversary of my divorce. Yes, due to some significant screw ups in scheduling on the part of my local court, I wound up having my divorce finalized in front of a judge on a Federal holiday, which truly I think is pretty cool.

So it’s a hat trick for teaching lessons this year. Each one has managed  to somehow hit me directly in the divorced guy part of my person. But the great thing is that I don’t mind. I find it pretty funny really.

We Need a Representative from that Group

Egads…Start ramping up for a birthday party for your 14-year-old and suddenly you’re five days out from your last blog entry. That, and some evenings just saying "I really don’t feel like my brain is firing on enough cylinders to do this justice." Like I’ve been doing it justice anyway. I really want it to have "Walking Tall" justice though. You know, the kind that says "You’ll respect this topic because it deserves it and I say so."

Yeah, the kids are all gone at Brokeback’s place and I’ve been watching some cable television.

But before watching The Rock* dispense justice this evening, I was at a single adult committee meeting for all the congregations of my church in this area. I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Much. At all. Truthfully, I was completely dreading it. At thirty-eight I am by far the youngest person on the committee, and after my daughter’s party I was feeling even younger. I was just sitting by and letting her and her friends goof off and have fun when a boy she invited started asking a bit about my computer setup. I started giving him specs and talking all the tech talk. Then they all started digging in my MP3 collection with lots of "oohs" and "ahhs" over the music I have. I had suddenly achieved my life-long goal of being cool with all the middle school kids, albeit twenty-five years late. So the prospect of meeting with a group where the median age is somewhere in the mid-sixties was an incredibly un-appealing follow-up.

Making the prospect of the meeting even less attractive was the knowledge that we were to begin planning the January event. A night of singing and music. All performed by other people so that we, the singles, can sit and listen politely. Much like a service activity where a group of youth go sing to shut-ins at the home. Something that people not having personal ownership of either a walker or a shawl would be remotely interested in. In short, I was going to participate in a meeting where I would not only be peering in upon, but also personally helping to architect one of my own personal levels of hell.

I was not stoked.

The meeting began much as I had expected. Some pleasantries, followed but some meandering thoughts to open the discussion. Then a period wherein my thoughts mostly centered on how hard I would have to beat my head on the table in front of me before blood would start trickling out of my ears. That thought would then turn to an internal debate over whether it would be possible at all to inflict that level of damage to my head since this was one of those long tables with fold-out legs made mostly of platic with a thin metal frame. The kind they use for stunts in pro wrestling. They crash through them and blood never comes out of their ears, so I’d probably just make a lot of noise and never be able to beat myself into unconsciousness as an escape from the begginings of conversation over refreshments for an activity four months in the future.

At about that point in the meeting though, the second-youngest person on the committee (missing me by something around a decade) interjected something from a telephone conversation he and I had a couple weeks ago. "With some of the things we do I really think we’re missing the ‘middle’ group of singles. The ones thirty to forty-five." I was not about to miss this opportunity.

"You know, I have to say that while I do appreciate all the effort that goes into this activity, I’m not interested in it. At all. I won’t be coming, and neither will anyone else in my age range." Talk about a conversation turner. This is my third time being part of planning this particular event, and while I have put some voice to this concern before, I’ve never done it so directly. And to the group’s credit, discussion quickly turned to questions of why I wouldn’t be interested and what we could do differently.

Answer to first question: Because I can’t think of anything more boring or soul-sucking than feeling I have to import people to make me feel like I’m not a social outcast.

Answer to second question: Plan something that I can do sooner than four freaking months from now.

Now, while I may not have put my thoughts in exactly those terms, I believe the point did make it across. People in the thirty to forty-five demographic have different interests, and would like to be social with each other so as to, perhaps, meet someone new with whom to spend their lives. It’s a novel concept, but as a church we are terrible, bad, awful at supporting our singles in having a social life with other singles within the church. We’re so worried about making sure that they don’t sleep with each other outside of marriage that we give them nothing to come to so as to insure that they sleep with people outside the church instead. As surprising as it may sound, that approach is not being met with a terrible lot of success, with the end result being that many of our divorced or never-married singles leave and never return.

All of this dicussion seemed to be making sense to everyone, and some good ideas were starting to be generated. Then at one point, someone interjected, "We should get someone from that age group here as a representative."

sigh…While it may not be perfect, at least it’s progress

 

* You didn’t think I’d be talking about Joe Don Baker, did you? And…yep. Right there, you’re too young for me again, aren’t you?

Only 14 Months of Disappointment to Go

I’m a politically conservative guy. Some may say “Well duh. You’re Mormon. Of course you’re conservative.” Oh how wrong you are to think that! I’ve known a few liberally-minded Mormons over the years. Mind you, they’re rare as a snowfall in Southtown, and half of those I’ve known are relatives of Brokeback, but they do exist.

So being a conservative type, I thought it might be a good idea to watch the Republican candidates debate each other last night. Get informed and see who I’d be willing to back. All that good stuff. I had been thinking I would like Mitt Romney based on some of the stuff I’ve heard from him in the past. Giulliani is someone that I have a hard time backing largely because my personal background with marriage. Cheats tend to put me off. But that’s just me. Plenty of people don’t have a problem with cheaters at all. McCain I just don’t get.

What I came away with instead was the following summary for the GOP hopefuls:

• Sam Brownback
  Nice guy with what sounds like reasonable thoughts. Not a chance in hell of getting elected.
• Rudy Giuliani
  He has a lot in his personal life to live down before I’d be comfortable with him.
• Mike Huckabee
  Got the most points from me for his very passionate, and obviously honest (or Oscar-worthy) position on the honor of our country and us as a people. Also not a chance in hell of getting elected. He’s talking about honor in a presidential race, after all.
• Duncan Hunter
  The robo-candidate. If this guy sounded any more cold or calculating, he’d be a liquid-cooled processor in a high-end computer (geek reference). While his ideas didn’t sound bad, he’s the perfect charicature of the cold-hearted Republican that more liberal people love to paint.
• John McCain
  He’s a great centrist Democrat. A man that panders this much shouldn’t be trusted to walk my dog, let alone run my country.
• Ron Paul
  Good freaking grief. If John McCain is a centrist Democrat, this guy is the DNC chairman. I have no idea what he’s doing in the Republican party, let alone trying to win a nomination in it.
• Mitt Romney
  What happened to the Mitt of a few months back that was affable, casual, and easily spoke his mind? He looked like he had a broomstick under his shirt, a corn cob up his butt, and a hand in the back of his neck making his mouth move. If a man can’t be himself, he’s hard to trust.
• Tom Tancredo
  Was he in this debate? He was? Was he dressed up as one of the other candidates or something?
• Fred Thompson
  He wasn’t even on the debate. He hadn’t even announced his candidacy yet. But somehow he still got as much or more attention in the debate than everyone else. That alone probably puts him ahead of all the others, even though I don’t know a thing that he stands for yet.

So the short version is that there were a bunch of nice guys that finish last, stealth Democrats, and political weasels on the stage. And one guy who seems to know how to play them all like a fiddle so far not even showing up. If this is what the Republican party has to offer, the next year-plus is going to drag on for a long time.