The Visit of the Big Failure

Some days, you get time.

Time to sit and think.

And where that time is idle time and the stuff you sit and think about is trivial, well, other things get thought about.

Skeletons. We all have them, real and metaphorical. I think a lot about them in fall and spring, when the time seems to slow down and there’s lots to think about, or at least lots of time for thinking.

Every year it seems, I have what I call the Big Failure. They seem to come in the fall for some reason, disturbing my sleep as they days get shorter and as Orion rises in the sky. Maybe it’s Orion’s fault. But most likely mine, and my tendency to be paranoid and overanalyze things.

I get to thinking about taking time off. I took a Thursday off a few weeks ago – not connected to this year’s Big Failure. I have time to take more. But then I’m underfoot at home and it doesn’t really help matters, so I may as well not do it.

I am being purposely vague; this is a public place, after all. I’ll know enough that reading this, five years down the line, ten years down the line, I’ll still remember what the Big Failure this time was. Unless, of course, I’m dealing with yet another more modern Big Failure, which is always possible.

Also, because this too shall pass.  It’s not career-ending or anything like that. Time heals all Big Failures. Though you think time would also be a contributing factor into reducing the frequency of Big Failures which, perhaps, it has.

Still.

Part of me wonders if it isn’t biological. I think most family members face the Big Failure to varying degrees. We all have our own little dancing skeletons.



UPDATE: This year’s Big Failure seems to have gone out with a whimper and not a bang as expected. Or else it’s just waiting in the wings for the right time to explode. Maybe it’s time I got out my reorg boots.

Social Media Fasting

Over the weekend, Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which I belong, suggested women in the church take a ten-day “fast” from social media. To be seen in context here:

I invite you to participate in a 10-day fast from social media and from any other media that bring negative and impure thoughts to your mind. Pray to know which influences to remove during your fast. The effect of your 10-day fast may surprise you. What do you notice after taking a break from perspectives of the world that have been wounding your spirit? Is there a change in where you now want to spend your time and energy? Have any of your priorities shifted – even just a little? I urge you to record and follow through with each impression.

Clearly, this isn’t a “social media is bad” moment, but more of an invitation to reflect on how time is used, and how that used time might be inviting negativity.

President Nelson invited youth to participate in a similar fast in April.

It now begs the question: What about the men?

Surely this admonition to avoid negative influences that wound our spirits applies universally. And clearly, taken in the wider context of admonitions and advice given this year both in April and this past weekend, examining how we spend our time and finding better uses for it is a good idea.

I’m considering a fast of my own. Maybe my perception that social media allows me an outlet to speak and joke with others might fade as I spend more time speaking and joking with the real people living in my house with me. You know, wife and children.

Although I have to give social media credit for this: I keep in touch so much better with my siblings through Facebook than I ever have in “real life” or via phone. Maybe that’s a shortcoming I need to conquer; a presence online is pale compared to a presence in person. But an online presence is better than nothing at all.

There are a few things that could be cut out, however:

• Buzzfeed, what with their foul words in the headlines even
• Fark, what with their foul words everywhere
• YouTube -- or at least selective parts of YouTube -- where the scum reside.

President Nelson Will Now Speak [Brace Yourselves]

This is where we're at. Or where we will be when January 2019 rolls around.

Very interestingly couched this announcement was, amid the message of "OK, you've got more time on the Sabbath Day. Now look at how you're observing the Sabbath and make better use of the time you've got. Remember, this is NOT a Sunday-only religion."

I Dislike First Person, or All the Good Writing Advice Comes from Futurama

I’ve finally read enough books written in the first person to decide this: I do not generally like books written in the first person.

Funnily enough, I don’t mind if one of the characters narrates the story – I’d have to pound on the McGurk Organization’s Joey Rockaway if I did mind – but perhaps that’s because good ol’ Joey isn’t telling me about things happening as they happen; he’s telling us things after events have transpired.
And I may have stumbled across the principal reason why I don’t like first-person writing: throbbing temples.

In almost every first-person book I read, a character’s temples are throbbing. All sorts of crazy is going on around them, but they focus on the throbbing temples. I guess it’s a way to show a dazed character, to show us as readers they’re in mortal danger yet have throbbing temples, THROBBING TEMPLES. We just don’t see the danger because THROBBING TEMPLES.

Too much time inside the character’s head.

And this is ironic, considering I’ve got a book in the works that is being told partially from the first person.

Maybe there are good examples of first-person writing out there and I haven’t yet stumbled across them, or have simply forgotten about it in the wave of all the good third-person writing that I’ve consumed.

There are ways to get inside a character’s head without stabbing the reader with the first-person “I”. Terry Pratchett does this well, particularly with his Sam Vimes and Tiffany Aching books.

And maybe I’m a snob, poisoned by so many good books told from a more omniscient perspective that reading a few from the first-person that aren’t all that great turns me off the style, which like hanging an onion on our belts, is the style at the time.

This could very well be a difference between writers who are able to show well versus writers who have to tell. And it inspires me to read these good authors again and again to pound this facet of writing into my head.

Cue the angsty Futurama Devil Robot again:



If the folks at nownovel.com are to be believed, I think the rule most often broken by first-person narratives – and the one that grates the most on me when it is broken – goes stregit to the show don’t tell phenomenon. To quote:

Because the narrator uses the first person ‘I’ (and sometimes the plural ‘we’) to tell the bulk of the story in first person narration, you may be tempted to begin sentences with ‘I’ a lot. Take this sentence for example:

‘I saw that the door was closed and I heard a faint scratching noise coming from within the house. I thought it sounded like someone trying to dig a tunnel out.’

The words ‘I saw’, ‘I heard’ and ‘I thought’ all place the reader at one remove to the unfolding events. The reader isn’t seeing, hearing or thinking these things through the narrator. The reader is being told about the narrator’s experiences.

Telling rather than showing can be defined as “overusing words that place distance between the narrator and [the] reader,” if I can borrow a phrase from nownovel.

Another rule that gets broken often is nownovel’s No. 5: “Vary the way your narrator expresses feelings, thoughts, and experiences.” Many of the first-person novels I’ve read have narrators that use one method – and one method only – to get these thoughts across. Points for consistency, but it grates after a while.

I also appreciate nownovel’s points on starting a story in first person.

With Apologies to St. Luke

A certain kitchen between the basement and bedrooms fell among slobs, who stripped it of its order, soiled it, and departed, leaving the counters unwiped and the filthy dishes stacked higher than the can opener.

And by chance there came up a certain teenager, a high school graduate and Deseret Industries worker: and when he saw it and his leftover gluten-free pizza, he passed by on the other side.

And likewise a teenage girl, when she was at the place, came and looked on it and plopped a few more dishes by the sink, and passed by on the other side.

LIkewise a third came by, and seeing the cold leftover pizza, ate himself another slice but did not put the rest in a container in the fridge nor did he consider the soiled counters or dishes, and passed by on the other side.

But a certain father, as he journeyed, came where the kitchen was; and when he saw it, he had compassion on it, knowing full well if he passed by on the other side the wife, still in the basement and ever hopeful that someone else would take pity on the kitchen and clean it would be chapped at its current state. So behold, he cleaned it. Well, most of it, leaving a few things to soak.

Thus we see the father wiped up the counters, and to the sink poured in water and fairy liquid, and took out the overflowing garbage, and brought the kitchen to a state of near cleanliness that may still draw a frown but not weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Hoping on the morrow, when he awoke, someone else would take out the recycling and give it to the bins, and say unto them, Thus will I do forevermore, and whatsoever I'd rather be doing than cleaning the kitchen shall be put off until it be clean.

Which now of these four, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto that which fell among the slobs?



(And he did listen to appropriate music as he cleaned.)

Why I Mark Books

I’d like to talk for just a moment about Mortimer Adler and the act of marking books.

As I read your responses to Adler’s article, I noted opinion typically fell into two camps, with some variation in each.

Camp One marks some books like their scriptures and see how marking up other books or reading material might be helpful.

Camp Two decidedly does not mark up reading material at all.

Adler’s pretty adamant in insisting that marking up a book is the only way to “own it,” or to internalize what is being said in it. A few of you took objection to that.

I’m here to say that for me, marking up what I read works – but I don’t mark up everything I read in the same way.

Why do I mark things?

Firstly, I tend to be a fast reader. Too fast, in that I miss a lot of things so I have to read a book several times for it to sink in. When I take notes, however, I slow down and retain more, and I don’t have to read and re-read the entire book to get the salient points I noted earlier.

Take, for example, this.

This is the triple combination I used through four years of seminary, while I was at college, and during my mission.

I’ve marked it to pieces, as you can see. Each color represents a different time I read the book over those long years.

I don’t necessarily remember everything I marked. However, when I do pull this book off the shelf and re-read it, the markings and notes – particularly the notes – help me remember times from my mission when I was struggling, and other times when I was riding high. Seeing the marks and notes triggers those memories. If I try to remember something specific – like right now – my memory fails me. But seeing those notes helps my brain make the connection from the words on the page to the memories stored in my head.

The marks, the memories, and the connections in my head remind me of this scene from “Groundhog Day,” where Bill Murray’s character tells Andie MacDowell maybe God knows what he does because he’s been around for a long time. One of these days, I hope to know more about the scriptures, just like God.



Here’s another book I’ve marked up – Terry Pratchett’s “Going Postal.” Not the kind of book you think a person would normally mark up. But I have.

This one is different, though. In this one, I’ve used sticky tabs to mark passages I felt were particularly funny, or had meaning to me in another way. I rarely mark this kind of book with a pen, and if I do I write on the sticky note, so I don’t leave a mark in the book.

Just as in the scriptures, I can look at a mark, read the passage, and immediately remember why I marked this part of the book.

What I’m getting at here is this:

1. If I mark up a book – no matter how I do it – I’m leaving myself a physical reminder in the physical thing of what my brain was thinking when I read the book. Even if the “why” of the mark is stored only in my head, the physical act of marking the book helps trigger those memories.

2. Triggering memories is the prime reason to mark a book. We read a lot of different things in our lives – and when I say read, I also mean watch, because this works with what we take in visually through television shows and such. When we have something trigger our memory, our brain physically makes connections between neurons to help us strengthen those memories. And as we strengthen memories, neurons that hold different memories will suddenly make new connections between themselves as we suddenly realize there’s a connection between something we already know and something we’re currently reading or witnessing. The more physical connections we have in our brains, the more we are able to connect those dots. The more intelligence we grow.

So I’m going to offer a challenge. Think of a way you can mark your books that satisfies your need to remember with your reverence for books or your reluctance to mark in the first place. Start building those connections. As you so this, I guarantee you’ll see your ability to think critically grow by leaps and bounds.

I testify that God created our brains to help us learn and remember and grow. As we use our brains, we will see growth.

Listen to the Hippies

I’m a total square, you know.

And a prude, probably.

It’s just this week the older two kids got “their own” cell phones. They’re 16 and 18.

We’ve given them the talk – several times, most often when the Family Life merit badge came up in Boy Scouts.

We’re picky who they party with. We want to meet their parents first.

They don’t get free reins on any vehicle. Only one of them has a driver’s license.

We teach them. They read. They think. They ask questions. They rebel.

But they also don’t drink. Don’t have questionable friends. They’re having the typical struggles in school, but they’re not washouts.

So far, so good.

And if they were nominated to the Supreme Court – not that we’d ever wish that on them – they could go before the nation and not have questions of shenanigans or alleged shenanigans in their past to haunt them.

They could go before the board with a conscience free of offense towards mankind.

They’re in the world, but not of the world. Or we mightily strive to have them be that way.

And we’re the ones the world looks on with shaking heads.

We, who frown at the promiscuity and laissez-faire with which we’re supposed to bless our children, we’re frowned on. Let your kids do what they want. Kids will be kids. Let them explore. Don’t fill their heads with your ideas.

Let them have sex when they want. Just give them birth control. That’s all they need.

Let them experience the world. Free.

Free, I say, but with warnings.

You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.
And you of tender years can’t know the fears that your elders grew by.

Our code includes respect for the sexes.

Our code includes no meaning no – and not ever getting to that point.

Our code includes avoiding intoxicants, which can lead down paths best left untraveled.

Teach your children well.

Ad you – go ahead and mock. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Or so you think.

Superallegorical

If you want an allegorically fantastic film to watch, watch 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Though billed as a science fiction/horror film, I like to think of it as a film of paranoia.

And not just fear of McCarthyism (as was suggested by critics of the original 1956 film) but of any ugly little quirk or tweak anyone might have in his or her psyche. The underlying conspiracy feeds particularly well to the following ecumenical bugaboos:

1. Monsanto
2. Chemtrails
3. Climate change
4. Climate change denial
5. Bararck Obama and the missing birth certificate
6. Donald Trump BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!

Those who display the early paranoia are condescended to, even by the experts, who insist that the whatever that’s bothering them about their loved ones is, well, kinda their fault. Kibner tells whatserface that if her husband Geoffrey feels cold and distant, it might just be because she subconsciously wants to push away from him.

And if they’re not displayed as paranoiacs, they’re displayed as maniacs, as with the hapless Kevin McCarthy, whom I hope had a ball with his cameo.

Those who feel the paranoids are told it’s them, not us. Everyone tells the paranoiacs that getting a good night’s sleep will cure all their ills. Then they realize how much sleeping plays into the goal of the parasite behind it all.

The joy in this film’s paranoia is that we’re left basically clueless about motivation – or if not clueless, at least freaked out by the pods’ reproductions. Each character brings into the story their own version of what’s going on, from aliens to government experimentation to a vague, unexplainable feeling that something’s just wrong. With all these competing interpretations battling with ordinary peoples’ blasé reactions and the coolness of the pod people trying to keep things hidden enough they can carry out their reproductive needs keeps the motivations so open nobody really knows what to think. Just like in real life.

I particularly love the film’s treatment of San Francisco. Any other film set in this city would be dripping with fantastic views and wistful vistas, but in this film San Francisco really feels like any city, and gets more and more ugly and claustrophobic as the story goes on. Even the few wistful vistas shown in the film seem pale, washed out, and menacing – just as any familiar and beloved place would feel when you know at the foundation of all things that something is dreadfully wrong.

And to quote Scott Meyer, I love that this film came from the era of science fiction when “mankind battled his own self-destructive tendencies. And also apes.” There is no happy ending; this film has probably one of the best endings in science fiction, which feeds perfectly into the film’s theme of paranoia. Even those you trust the most can suddenly appear to have drunk the Kool-Aid.

I Need An Answer

I need an answer to this question: Can I still enjoy Bill Cosby’s comedy?

And I know I'm not the only one thinking this.

Cosby’s personal life notwithstanding, there are some comedy gems in Cosby’s long repertoire. I just want to know if there’s enough separation between Cosby the man and Cosby as an entertainer if I can enjoy listening to his old routines without the vast majority of folks out there having a conniption (which Cosby describes thus: )



Or, conversely, should I place my Cosby memories on the pile to be burned?

I’m not going to be dragged into any debates about permissive society, Puritanical society forcing others into more bohemian pursuits, or deciding what lines should not be crossed or who should be allowed to cross them while others are crucified for getting a little bit of that line chalk on their sneakers. That’s a dead end of Itoldyas and Weshouldas and other bullshittery that won’t answer the question.

To my Mormon compatriots, I ask: Can I still enjoy listening to old Bruce R. McConkie talks even though his admonition that the Catholic Church is the “great and abominable church” mentioned in The Book of Mormon has been dismissed? Or Joseph Smith getting sick of answering the “Wheredya get that thar Golden Bible” query by inventing a glowing salamander?

(Another aside: I won’t be drawn into any apples for oranges discussions either. They won’t answer the question.)

The question being: When someone commits the unpardonable – or at least the unfathomable – do we shove everything that person has done down one of the Ministry of Truth’s memory holes?

Hyperbolic?

I don’t think so.

When do we follow the admonition “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.1”

Which is preceded by this:

My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts, and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened.

Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.

I don’t see anything here that says these knuckleheads weren’t guilty of whatever it was that upset the others, nor that the knuckleheads were even penitent about it. All I see is the commandment to forgive.

Yes, easy to read in theory but difficult to perform in practice. Perhaps I will have a time when my ability to forgive is tested.

That time may come. Until then, maybe I’d better practice.

But in practice do I elevate those who no longer deserve adulation? Or, shall we say, appointment to high office? Maybe it’s easy to still enjoy Bill Cosby because the Cosby we know now isn’t actively on stage, still selling us his comedy. Maybe it’s harder, say, to forgive if the perceived or suspected sinner is still ascendant, say, towards a slot on the Supreme Court.

Because you know that fellow Hitler, he may have done some questionable things there in Munich, but that’s no guarantee he’ll continue that bad behavior once he becomes Chancellor2.

And Cosby ain’t innocent. “Cosby,” CNN says, “was accused by dozens of women of drugging and sexually assaulting them over his decades as a powerful media figure. Cosby was convicted in April of three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and assaulting [Andrea] Costand at his home in 2004, in the first high-profile celebrity criminal trial of the #MeToo era.”

Aha! What say ye now, Smartypants McBloggerman?

How far up or down down the ascendancy do we go?

Do degrees of fame or potential power raise the bar for forgiveness?

I surely remember, “Wickedness never was happiness.3”

I need so much practice.

1 Doctrine and Covenants 64:10.
2 Yes, I just Godwinned my own post.
3 Alma 41:10

May as Well Have Been Talking Swedish

Today kina closes an era.

I’m retiring the old LG flip phone, which I’ve used for I don’t know how long. We’ve had it on a pay-as-you-go plan forever, and it’s served well. Usually, I either forgot to bring it with me, forgot to turn it on, or just never heard the ring or felt the buzz when someone was calling.

I enjoyed it, though. A few times one of my scouts – typically one of the new ones – asked to borrow my phone, likely because he wanted to look something up on the Internet. The looks on those faces when I handed over the phone were precious. And they weren’t shy about dissing its antiquity.

“Ew,” one scout said when he looked at the phone in a pizza parlor (I’m old enough I say pizza parlor). “It has buttons.”

Whenever I handed it over, I felt like the Swedish Chef handling his blunderbussen. And I was fine with that. I knew how the blunderbussen worked.

But no more.

Today I switch over to a smartphone.

That doesn’t necessarily bode well.

Though I have used my Kindle Fire extensively, I don’t have a good track record with smartphones. I had to borrow one a few years ago to make a call at work, and when the call was over I had no idea how to hang up. (I’m so old I talk about hanging up when I’m making a phone call. I also still dial a number.)

When my wife is driving and needs me to do something with her phone, it inevitably boils down to her pulling over somewhere so she can figure out what I did to it.

But my wife found a killer family cell phone plan and decided, with older phones languishing in drawers, it was time to get them in use. So we all have phones – with the exception of the youngest, who does not. He and his mother discussed the situation over the weekend behind closed doors. I don’t know what kind of deal she struck or what kind of logic she used, but he seems if not necessarily OK with the situation, at least resigned to it. Further bulletins as events warrant on that front to be sure.

We spent two hours at the Tmobile store over the weekend, getting the new plan set up. My wife was in charge of that. I mainly spent my time wandering the store and blowing my nose in a discreet manner. I was dispatched to look at phones on their Big Wall O’ Phones, and was tempted to point out the newish-looking flip phone there. Found out it won’t work with the plan we’re looking at. So I found a few possibilities and then went home to look at them elsewhere. Found the one my father-in-law recommended (more than the one I was looking at) for $40 less than the store had it, so that’s where we went.