Huttah For Israel!

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2011-07-16T14:12:00.005-06:00

We're headed home this week. I haven't written about what we've done here at all, which I realize has disappointed some fans (Mom); but every time I sit down to write, the background is overwhelming. This world is just too big and too different to tell any stories without paragraphs of parentheses. But you have to start somewhere.

There's been a dead cat in the street on the way to our office building for about a month and a half now. I saw it get hit back in June. It never rains in Amman, and nobody cleans the streets, so things just... stay. It's like the moon, but with rotting garbage instead of astronaut footprints.

Every morning on the way to work, we enjoy a slideshow of decomposition; from the overpowering, nauseating bloat at the beginning to this second smell that I can only describe as "ghetto"--the way filthy houses and trailers smelled in Memphis--to the final desiccated, skeletal husk that will have to be carried off by the wind, I guess.

So there you have it.

Picture a gregarious Japanese kid greeting you with "Que onda?"

2011-05-26T04:05:00.001-06:00

I learned the Egyptian dialect at BYU, and every time I use Egyptian words, people grimace and laugh; and when they repeat the words, you get the sense that they feel like taking a shower afterward.

Most of the farm labor here is Egyptian, and the social dynamic is uncannily familiar—they’re darker-skinned than Jordanians in general, and you see dozens of them waiting for work outside hardware stores. Polite Jordanians will refer to them as “hard-working”, while others allude to a perceived machismo and lasciviousness. There’s even a vaguely analogous national discussion about illegal immigration—though it’s a lot less vitriolic since the racial undercurrent isn’t as strong.

So, although everyone claims to be quite egalitarian, there is something about hearing Egyptian Arabic from a rich white kid that they find hilariously dissonant. I guess it would be like a Japanese kid learning English in South Central LA, and then coming to Salt Lake and calling everybody “ese”. Which, by the way, would probably redefine the fish-out-of-water genre as we know it. I want to see a screenplay on my desk by next week.

In any event, I’m trying to adopt the Badia dialect, which has its own tough-guy connotations in the city; it will be interesting to see how it plays. One of the shop vendors has already deemed it hilarious and given me and my colleagues free strawberry-pineapple slushes, though, so confidence is high.

I am living in a slasher film.

2011-05-23T01:43:00.003-06:00

Things weren’t planned as tight as we thought they would be—welcome to Jordan—so for the past couple days, we’ve been essentially camping in what looks like a Saudi aristocrat’s abandoned summer home. And yes, living in an abandoned mansion is exactly as creepy as you’re imagining.

At first glance, it’s magnificent; a three-story, walled villa with olive orchards, rose gardens and ivy creeping up the stone paths and archways. The whole ground floor is full of guest rooms and bathrooms, and a kitchen about as big as our apartment back home. Around the verandah, there’s a special exterior building for receiving guests, with worn, washed-out pictures of the homeowner shaking hands with various members of the Saudi royal family, including the crown prince.

In a village of small homes built out of bare cinderblock, it’s so out of place as to seem surreal—like it just flashed into being out of the ether one day. Possibly as the result of a pact with Satan. As beautiful as it is, though, it clearly hasn’t been lived in for a long time. Picture the nicest house you’ve ever been in, five years after the zombie apocalypse.

There’s no water, no gas, the toilets don’t flush, the front door doesn’t lock, and everything has that musty smell of a tarp that’s been left in the garage for a long time. We spent last night in the tile foyer, washing our clothes in buckets and sponge-bathing in a five-gallon tub of cold water.

The paint is coming off the walls and ceiling in big flaky sheets, and long, spindly-legged spiders have colonized the toilets and the warm, malodorous refrigerator. (I thought spiders were supposed to work alone, but apparently these are Arab spiders—friendly and family-oriented.) There are rat turds underneath and behind everywhere you look, though the culprits have yet to show themselves. It’s a lively little ecosystem, considering the desolation outside.

Adding to the ominous post-apocalyptic vibe is the stuff the owners chose to leave behind: faded pictures on the walls, a couple food items in the pantry (which I assume sustains the zoo that has lived here since they left), and two locked rooms that are still fully furnished, with their personal papers still in the drawers and books on the shelves.

They left weird stuff in the fridge—a ten-pack of rectal suppositories, a tupperware full of tea leaves, and nothing else. I’m told that the homeowner went to high school with Saddam Hussein, and was thus forced to flee to Saudi Arabia when Hussein slaughtered his entire graduating class. Our town sits on the highway to Baghdad, 300km east—who knows, maybe the Ba’athists came looking for him.

My story gets better, though; not only are we living in the haunted mansion all by ourselves, but we moved in during the biggest dust storm the town has seen in years. Visibility is about a hundred meters, and the sun is a perfect white sphere behind a gauzy veil of dust. That makes things a little creepier, sure; but then there’s the 50 mph winds that have slammed against the windows and doors, without interruption, for the last three days. We’re huddled in our little corner of the house, and in the dark, empty rooms all around us, things are going bump in the night.

(Later): Once the storm subsided, we bought cleaning supplies and groceries, and went to work establishing a little human colony in one corner of the house. The front door has been bashed off its hinges—again, nothing suspicious about that—but handily, there are locks on each interior door, each with its own key. So, we just picked the four rooms we needed and locked ourselves in, leaving the rest of the house to the spiders, vermin, vagrants, and vengeful undead that no doubt already live there.

2011-05-17T03:04:00.002-06:00

We’re staying at the home of Dr. Faisal, a business administration professor who teaches at four different universities around the Badia. His wife, Umm Munther, is the principal of the primary school where we teach English.

Their son, Munther, is about to finish the thanawiya el-3amma, a year of intense study and memorization unlike anything we have in the States, that establishes one’s educational and career options for the rest of forever. You take just a few classes every week, with the expectation that the rest of the day will be spent at home, drilling and memorizing for two big tests at the end of the year. People who can afford it send their kids to cram schools, hire private tutors, plead, threaten, persuade, cajole, and bribe their kids to get this one thing right, because, for universities and employers, nothing else matters.

It’s a pretty dysfunctional system; I’m told that no matter what you accomplish later in life, if you bomb the thanawiya, you’re going to be essentially unemployable. Munther’s family esteems education very highly, and individual behavior reflects much more strongly on the family here than it does in the States, so it’s a time of high expectations.

Unfortunately, Munther is a young man after my own heart. He studies for maybe an hour a day, and then hangs out with his friends or watches TV. Putting myself in his position, it makes complete sense: he’s been told that his choices are (a) to have fun with his friends, bomb the thanawiya, and die poor and lonely; or (b) buckle down and do nothing else all year to qualify for the opportunity of four more years of rigorous schooling and testing, with the possibility (by no means assured) of a comfortable desk job in Amman when he’s finished.

If those were my options, I don’t think my efforts would be particularly inspired either. From our conversations I can tell that he’s inquisitive and bright; the feeling I get is that he has (sensibly) decided that the game is stupid, so he’s not going to play. I understand his family’s exasperation, trying so desperately to motivate him; but I don’t think they could have motivated me either.

I spoke to Dr. Faisal about the possibility of sending Munther to the LDS Business College to wipe the slate clean, like I did; and I learned something very interesting. Obviously if Munther can get into the Business College, he can go on to any university in the country, and his high school grades will be irrelevant. That means he can easily accomplish whatever he wants to—except work in the Middle East. He could earn a doctorate from a prestigious American school; but if he ever comes back here to work, the first thing any Middle-Eastern employer will check is his score on the thanawiya el-3amma.

You can see the problem: Munther’s situation cannot be all that uncommon. Surely there are thousands like him every year—bright, capable, independent thinkers who reject a no-win scenario here in the Middle East and head for the “land of opportunity”. This would not be so problematic, but when they finally make good, rather than welcoming them home to build their country with the skills they learned in the West, they are told that their youthful indiscretions are unforgivable. Go be a doctor or an engineer or a professor in America, because you’re not welcome here.

I’m not worried about Munther, and neither is Munther. He’ll find a way to succeed. What I am worried about is the country that will lose him forever when he leaves.

"You eat it. Good for man-to-man."

2011-05-12T06:30:00.000-06:00

We’re in the Badia now: a vast, empty scrubland and desert north-northeast of Amman. From our hosts’ home in Ad-Dafyanan, we can see Syrian hilltop villages. We are less than ten miles from the killing in Dara’a, but Jordanians pride themselves on being aloof from the chaos and tyranny of their neighbors. Our contact in the region is Shlash Al-Oun, and in demeanor he reminds me of no one so much as my father’s redneck vinyl-siding salesmen, albeit better-dressed and better-educated. His father wears the traditional Bedouin robes and Jordanian checkered keffiyeh, but Shlash wears neatly-ironed slacks and collared shirts, polishes his shoes and gels his hair.

Shlash is the oldest of 18, and his family has all their holdings in common in a single, massive account. The men all go to university, and when they turn 30 they marry and are provided with a car, and a house in the village. It’s an artful mix of tribalism and capitalism—their communal finances create a much larger investment pool, which is one factor in their family’s wealth. As foreign as the arrangement is to me, as we toured his rural demesne I could not help being impressed with the results.

The Al-Oun family has built four deep water wells that feed villages and farms throughout their tribal region, and they’re worth about $1.3 million each. I drank directly from the intake, and it was the clearest, sweetest water I’ve ever tasted. It is a strange thing to splash your face with rainwater that fell 65 million years ago, and hasn’t seen daylight since.

The Al-Ouns grow olives, stonefruit, grapes, malt, melons, and wheat on land that they rotate every seven years; and they keep horses, camels, donkeys, sheep, and goats in their stables. When we walked in, Shlash told us to stand back, made a clipped, guttural call, and two massive Arabian horses burst out of their pens and charged across the yard to their trough. They were the horses of a woman’s weird Freudian fantasies; glossy and panting and muscular. With one more shout from Shlash, they jumped from the trough and stormed back into their pens faster than I’ve ever seen an animal move.

The camels were hilarious and ungainly—especially the week-old calf that Shlash delivered, who hadn’t quite figured out his legs yet—but far more interesting was the dog. Arabs don’t keep dogs; they see them as scavengers and pests, something like they way we think of raccoons or coyotes, and the whole time we were in the stables, this filthy yellow dog skulked in wide circles around us, head down, always watching for some morsel to catch, jumping back at any sudden movement. Strange how even a dog will be exactly what it is expected to be.

Driving along rows of olive trees and grapevines draped on aluminum trellises, we drove past Abu Shlash (Shlash’s father) in his pickup truck. His face was dark and weatherbeaten, almost callused, and he spoke to Shlash out of a tracheotomy tube about the need to harvest the malt before the drought kills it, and to put us with “someone respectable” because we are “from Loren’s side”.

Dinner at Shlash’s home was a gauntlet of cultural obstacles. First, my wife was ushered into the women’s area, and I was briefly introduced to Shlash’s wife and daughter. Loren says this is an honor, and was only possible because I am married—Loren, being single, did not meet Shlash’s wife until several months after the wedding.

Without thinking, I immediately moved in to shake his daughter’s hand. She, apparently trying to be polite, hesitantly reached for mine, before I realized that I was making an ass of myself and quickly withdrew and pressed my hand to my chest. I later mentioned the killing of Osama Bin Laden at dinner, which also went over like a fart in church. Better to get these errors out of the way among understanding people, I suppose.

Dinner was a single silver platter of yellow rice and boiled chicken with a yoghurt broth poured over the top, called menzef, the eating of which is apparently an essential Bedouin experience. It can be eaten with utensils, but I’m told you’re not cool until you’ve eaten menzef by hand. They said they would teach me how to eat it, and I said, “It’s eating with your hands; how hard could it be?” but I quickly discovered that there is definitely a wrong way. There is a rather elaborate ritual of tearing the chicken, playing with the rice in the platter, scooping it into your hand, balling it, and then flicking it into your mouth with your thumb; and for now it appears to be beyond my capacity. I made a tremendous mess.

We ate with the shabaab (the boys), and Loren said it best: “It’s like hanging out with five-year-olds, with no girls to impress and no manners to keep.” They didn’t say much while we ate, which I am told is customary, except to tell me, “hand to mouth, not mouth to hand.” After a long silence, Shlash’s brother (cousin? nephew?) pointed to a plate of long, jagged leaves and said, leering, “You eat it. Good for man-to-man.” Then everyone giggled awkwardly, and Loren said (in Arabic) “Enough, enough. He’s learned enough for one day.”

Now, the reader will understand that I was already pretty uncomfortable. They didn’t have a lot of English, and I didn’t have a lot of Arabic, and there’s nothing more unsettling than being in a strange place, alone, while a bunch of middle-aged dudes talk about you in a language you barely understand; but I’m a man of the world. I can handle it. I was even getting used to the way these repressed, macho cowboys cuddled when they were alone together; but nobody had touched the leaves before me, and I wasn't about to 'learn by doing' as far as "man-to-man" was concerned.

When I refused to let it drop, Loren finally told me that man-to-man refers to “performance”. Ostensibly with women. So, hoping against hope that that was the whole truth, I hesitantly took a bite of one of the leaves; and I am happy to report, dear readers, that I have not suffered from erectile dysfunction even once since then; and, as far as I know, I was not drugged and raped by the Bedouin.

Truthfully, apart from the enjoyment they clearly derived from watching me squirm, everyone we've met has been perfectly hospitable and kind. The language and the culture take constant mental effort to navigate, but we're surrounded by patient people, and they seem to enjoy helping us learn. More on our work and our host family in the next post.

Kevin

22 Days.

2011-04-14T11:04:00.001-06:00

I’ve never been to a foreign country, but the idea of being a foreigner myself is probably the most alluring prospect. It will be nice to live for a while in a world that does not really expect me to understand it.

I joined the Church largely through books. I didn’t like most of the Mormons I knew, and they didn’t seem to like me. It was always puzzling to me that we could agree perfectly on these odd, specific, unpopular doctrines that absolutely nobody else seemed to find persuasive, while connecting on seemingly no other grounds whatsoever, and in fact finding each other vaguely offensive.

The temptation was (and is) to believe that those Mormons were not really sincere; they were the blinkered, flabby heirs of a tradition that they did not appreciate or even really understand. Like the Eloi in The Time Machine, their forbears built this magnificent edifice of ideas, which they use as casually and incuriously as one uses a microwave oven.

So I came here looking for my “tribe”. If I could find it anywhere, it would be here (and conversely, if I couldn’t find it here…)

Of course, I discovered that feeling alienated at BYU is actually one of the more authentic, nigh-universal rites of passage for LDS young people. Paradoxically, it’s the expectation of belonging that makes it so lonely–if even the Mormons don’t get you, you must be a real weirdo.

That’s why it will be so enjoyable to live in a foreign country. They won’t make sense to me, and I won’t make sense to them, and there will be no existential loneliness about it. In all these cultural training meetings they keep talking about the horrors of culture shock, but to me it just sounds like Provo.

Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

2010-07-07T20:59:00.000-06:00

I get mad at the TV lately.

As a kid, it always amazed me that people would get angry about what was depicted on television, or on the internet... hearing people with that attitude, I always thought, who cares if Babylon thinks that fornication and drugs and violence are acceptable? "The world" will always be hostile to the gospel--God has been telling us this for thousands of years. Why should we expect any different? Why rage and fume at it?

The answer, I find, is fear. I never hated those temptations before, because they seemed foolish to me, obvious. When I was a kid, most of what God said to do was obviously the smart thing to do anyway, whether it was God saying so or not. Don't do drugs, don't have sex until you're married, be good to people. And I got to feel a little smug, too--nobody else was reading the books I was reading, having the experiences I was having (as far as I knew). My spiritual life was an exciting secret, like being a superhero. Even the mission was not that hard of a decision: I loved teaching, and it sounded like an adventure.

In those days, the difference between my life and the advertised "good life" was inconsequential. Most people agree that they'd be better off without the addictions and poor decisions and fumbling adolescent sexual embarrassments that they accrued in their teenage years. Living the gospel always seemed "smart".

But now, living the gospel means making choices that the rest of the world would consider extremely foolish; and I'm reminded of it every time I turn on the television. To choose just one person to be with for the rest of your life--and worse, to choose that person without living together first--nothing about that decision sounds smart, unless the gospel is true. To make, really any promise at age 23 that will define your life for the remainder (and beyond)--that's optimistic to the point of insanity, unless the gospel is true. Especially if you intend to keep that promise.

The world says that kids my age are supposed to be living for themselves, making money for themselves, figuring themselves out while backpacking in Europe or something. They're not supposed to be halfway through undergrad, married, living at home and uninsured. For the first time, the life I chose doesn't sound like such a smug, pat proposition. If the gospel isn't true, I'm missing out. It's scary.

But I got this answer this morning, and it seemed worth sharing.

In Numbers 14, twelve Israelite spies have just delivered their report after infiltrating the promised land. They say Canaan is beautiful and fruitful, but that a race of indomitable giants--the Anakim--occupy it. Ten of the spies say that invading the land would be foolhardy--"We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we... we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Numbers 13:31-32). They call it a land "that eateth up the inhabitants thereof." The other two spies, Joshua and Caleb, see things more clearly--knowing all that God has done to deliver Israel to this point, they testify that God will still deliver them, and keep His promise.

But Israel weeps, saying, "Would God that we had died in Egypt, or in the wilderness!" Having endured so much in their journey, they seem to believe that it has all been for nothing. And if Moses had been merely a charismatic desert sheikh--seeing the situation from a worldly point of view--it would be true. They took the Holy Land with a tiny force, upheld by miracle after miracle throughout the conquest. It was an impossible task, with their strength.

Israel attempts to select a leader to bring them back to Egypt (to what end? To hold out their necks again to Pharaoh's yoke?) and Moses, Joshua, and Caleb fall on their faces and tear their clothes in mourning for the shortsightedness of their people.

It's hard to see myself in the scriptures, because my heart is more often with the wayward children of Israel than with their prophets. I am ashamed to say how often I look back with longing on Sodom and Gomorrha, or the "flesh pots of Egypt." I know God lives, of course; just as surely as if I had walked through the Red Sea with them. But it is so easy to forget, to lose heart; to see only a land "waiting to devour you", not one flowing with milk and honey.

It is encouraging to note that Israel did not go back to Egypt. They feel certain that the Canaanites will destroy them; but, like me, their fear of the Canaanites is overpowered by their fear of God, and He carries them, kicking and screaming and backsliding, into the promised land. But the tragedy is that they had to endure all their trials with such despair. Their distrust of God led them to seek security in idolatry and foreign exploitation--but also, paradoxically, to hate and fear their neighbors, whom God had commanded them to love as themselves.

When faced with that kind of fear, it is surprisingly easy to become paranoid--to see even mild criticism or contradiction as a threat, even when that criticism is only implied--or even unintentional. In that mindset, even a TV show that depicts immorality as wise, sane, and enjoyable gets interpreted as a personal attack on my tenuous spiritual life. And maybe it is, in fact; but it never bothered me before.

It's one of our culture's favorite platitudes that fear breeds intolerance; I don't think I'm saying anything new here. What is surreal is to experience it for myself.

God is not obsessive-compulsive.

2010-06-19T04:50:00.008-06:00

The other morning I was reading in Leviticus (chapter 13, on leprosy), and struggling to understand why this was a worthy inclusion in our scriptures. What spiritual merit is there in reading the half-understood (and mostly ineffective) diagnosis of a disease that has been largely eradicated from the modern world?

What came to me was a beautiful metaphor of the supremacy of Christ's new covenant--a simple set of principles, to replace a vast and byzantine arrangement of rules.

Leprosy is not an especially infectious disease; it could have been easily prevented, even in Moses' time, with basic hygiene. Essentially, a person who bathes regularly, drinks clean water, and properly cooks his food, has almost no risk of contracting leprosy.

Moses (or at least God) understood this--the very rules he prescribes betray an understanding of the basics of epidemiology. These principles would have been easy to obey and even easier to explain; but what Israel got was an encyclopedic laundry list of rules , which only poorly contained the plague and ruthlessly ostracized its victims.

Leviticus makes sharp distinctions between of clean and unclean--but was anybody in those days clean, in any meaningful sense? No, they were all filthy; that's how societies get endemic leprosy. But the ritually "clean" got to live normally (even if, as in Lev. 13:13, they were literally leprous "from head to toe"), while the "unclean" were forced into a life of humiliation and desperate poverty on the fringe of Israelite society.

Worse, there was no concept of treatment--you were simply cut off from the congregation, for life, unless by a miracle your illness resolved itself naturally.

Why does this matter? Because the same dilemma can be found in the Mosaic law governing sin. Rather than an explanation of justice, mercy, faith, repentance, etc. (the principles of salvation, which a child can comprehend), Israel was given an endless list of commandments that took an army of lawyers and rabbis to interpret.

Every aspect of life was governed by a surprisingly specific and encyclopedic code of laws. You knew what you were to do, and what you were not to do, in almost any situation--but only occasionally did you understand why. As with leprosy, God did not teach Israel the principles underlying His commandments.

There was almost no room for repentance and rehabilitation--for most sins, the penalty was death. For the few exceptions, there were sacrifices prescribed--but the law did not purport to heal the sinner any more than it could claim to cleanse the leper. The law did not deal in healing--its purpose was to cut out social malignancy. The sinner was not a patient to be healed, but an infected limb to be amputated.

The saddest thing about this policy was that, for all its specificity and cruel rigidity, the law of leprosy was actually less effective in treating leprosy than even a rudimentary explanation of germ theory would have been. Likewise, the law of carnal commandments--a tedious, oppressive extrapolation of a few blessedly simple principles--could do nothing to fight the causes of sin. Sinners were destroyed, rather than healed, and many fell ill who would have remained healthy if they had known how to keep themselves clean. The most drastic and brutal treatment is not always the surest.

Instead of fearing and ostracizing lepers (and sinners), a more enlightened people could have rehabilitated the afflicted, with no risk at all to themselves. Why, then, did God give the law this way in the first place?

For the same reason that children aren't told exactly why they can't cross the street by themselves. Obviously there's nothing intrinsically morally wrong about crossing the street; and if a child could truly comprehend the danger, and could be trusted to remember, to be aware, then such a rule would be unnecessary.

But children can't really understand such rules, so we tell them "You are not allowed to cross the street by yourself, ever" until they're mature enough to understand. Obviously it is not our intention that children live this way forever, and it was not God's intention for Israel to remain under the law any longer than was necessary.

The problem is, Israel never learned that it was okay to cross the street. Instead, they wrote long treatises on what exactly constitutes "crossing the street", and delivered impassioned sermons about the manifold immoralities to which crossing the street inevitably leads. In short, they completely missed the point.

The law of Moses has been called draconian, and certainly it was. But the mainstream Christian idea that God somehow "grew up" into a loving and compassionate Father is ridiculous. We raise small children with rules and penalties that would be ludicrous and tyrannical to impose on adults. Is it because we love adults more than children? Is it because we get nicer as our children get older? Of course not. It's because they become capable of comprehending principles, and no longer need the rules.

Provo is badly oversalted.

2010-04-18T14:38:00.005-06:00

Is it weird to say I miss Texas for the diversity? Back home, I took for granted the fact that I had friends from all over the world, from so many different faiths. Now, I can't remember the last time I talked in person with someone who wasn't Mormon. In the rest of the world, I suppose the Church is viewed as a tiny, peripheral minority--I still remember being galled by my high-school government teacher discussing the electoral impact of the United States' 5 million Jews, and then telling me that the six million Mormons in the US were "not statistically significant". Here in Provo, however, "we" are suffocatingly numerous.

I'm reading this book, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations", by David Landes; and there's a chapter on the intellectual decline of Portugal and Spain in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. Obviously the Church is not the inquisitorial Moloch that sixteenth-century Spanish Catholicism was; institutionally, the Church is carefully, self-consciously tolerant. But there is an intellectual dearth that seems inevitable when you surround yourself with ostensibly like-minded people.

I didn't expect it to be this way. One would think that having so much of our intellectual foundation in common, we would save time arguing and be better equipped to explore the frontiers of what we don't know; but unfortunately, it seems that the uniformity is more pretended than real. We are supposed to believe the same things, but our worldviews are far more colored by upbringing, cultural milieu, socioeconomic status, and political leanings than one would hope.

Faith permeates every aspect of our intellectual life, so that you'll find it wherever you cut--and this is a good thing--but it breeds a kind of polite silence on certain issues. Since we use all the same religious materials to defend radically divergent points of view, discussions have a danger of becoming uncomfortably personal.

The beauty of growing up in Texas was that I didn't expect anyone to agree with me. I could talk to my friends about almost anything, and because we acknowledged our vastly different intellectual origins, we could just relax and enjoy it. I want to have that again.

On the other hand, my education is currently 70% subsidized by tithing, and it's hard to say no to $2,000 a semester.

No hot water, no toilets, no lights, but Whitey's on the moon

2010-02-15T16:38:00.005-07:00

Am I the only one who thinks the Olympics are just a little bloated and self-important? The luge is cool, I guess, but when I hear that somebody has died in the lifelong pursuit of an otherwise absolutely useless skill, I don't understand our need to romanticize it. As much as the commercials try to feed you the idea, one's ability to go down a hill on a plank really is not a compelling metaphor for human achievement.

I imagine that guy getting to heaven, and the other dead folks asking him, "So, how did you go?" And when he explains it to them, they say, "...Oh. You woke up at 4:30 every morning and trained all day for twenty years so you could do that? Like, you really couldn't think of one field of human endeavor that might have been a better use of all that time and discipline? A world eating itself alive with war, famine, hatred, disease... you could have worked in a thumbtack factory, and at least then you'd be making thumbtacks. But no, you picked luge."

The strength of character and will required to make it to the Olympics (or, really, any professional sport) only deepens my misgivings about it: these are people who clearly could have accomplished something more meaningful.

And it isn't just sport; this McQueen guy spends his life making weird-ass costumes for waifish cocaine addicts to wear (once), and then when he dies you hear interviews from industry people talking about all his "great contributions", and all he accomplished before he was taken from us too soon.

You can work your whole life to become the best dog groomer or cake decorator or wedding planner in the business, but don't expect the rest of us to pull long faces and talk about how meaningful it was that you "dedicated your life" to your ludicrous profession.

Whitey On The Moon

Like Tarzan, but the gorillas are in people-suits.

2010-01-08T18:08:00.008-07:00

The grocery store was flooded with young married couples this Monday, many of them younger than myself. It was terrifying. I can't expect a mundane chore like grocery shopping to reflect the deep beauty of their marital union or anything, but their expressions and posture just seemed to epitomize banality: a long, slow death. How could you possibly need two minds at a time dedicated to the choice between Skippy and Jif?

The problem with a woman who claims to enjoy domesticity is that all that nonsense is actually important to a person like that. I can't imagine the boredom of shambling through a department store behind such a woman, being consulted about which shower curtain "we" want.

Likewise a woman who really knows how to paint her face and tousle her hair just right, and does it absolutely every day; that can be admirable, until she opens her mouth and you find out everything she isn't thinking about in the time it takes her to get that done.

Or those kids who kill themselves to get into business school or law school or medical school even though they couldn't give a crap about business or law or medicine; who somehow manage a 3.95 GPA while learning absolutely nothing interesting (I'm looking at you, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.)

I have some admiration for tight schedules and early mornings, the stuff we are told temporal success is made of--but in conversations with that sort of person, I have to wonder just what occupies their thinking in quiet moments. We have sixteen hours of consciousness in a day, and it can't all be aimed at accomplishing your five-year plan.

These are not unintelligent people; are they really just endlessly running over their to-do list and mentally checking their pockets, all day long? Even on the john, or at the bus stop? Certainly they aren't thinking about anything else, or they'd be more interesting to talk to.

And if that's the case, can such a creature really be classified as sentient? No matter how sophisticated the solution may be, amoebas and crustaceans and roundworms have for millions of years managed the same problems effectively enough. Ants know how to get things done. I need to get out of BYU.

I've been acting like a douchey college guy lately. For one thing, I like Bob Marley now.

2009-10-16T03:20:00.005-06:00

I meet a lot of people around here who are always smiling and never laughing. Those guys make me nervous. It's not a grin, or a smirk, or a leer. It isn't smug, or sheepish, or wry, or conspiratorial. It isn't anything. It's like a mask, like their faces are just shaped like that. I imagine them standing over a corpse, holding a smoking pistol, smiling like that.

So that's over the top. They're mostly just quiet math kids, harmless and humorless. But still, it's unnerving. When I say something funny, you laugh, dammit.

I got asked on a date this week, which was a first for me, as far as I can remember. It was fascinating to see the struggle from the outside. Not that she had a particularly hard time, but she phrased it very carefully, so as not to be misunderstood: "...was wondering if you would like to go with me to the such and such, as-my-date."

Of course, I would love to accompany you to the such and such on Friday at 7 pm as-your-date. I have never been conscious of being someone's date. She bought the tickets, she's going to pick me up and everything; I don't have to think about it at all until it happens. It's fantastic. More girls should ask me out.

I've got a couple date ideas now, but I haven't had opportunity to try them out. Submitted for your approval:

1. I liked the idea of a girl making up her story, so I think I want to build a date around that. We ask each other all those boring first-date questions, but we make up the answers. I think I could learn more about a girl from her fantasies than her reality. But it's a high-stakes game; there's the possibility that even her fantasies are boring, and then what can you do? Answer:

2. Stealth Kite. Buy a kite from the store, tear off the sail, and replace it with cellophane. Then you use some kind of thick, dark yarn instead of the line it comes with; the idea being that when you fly it, it looks like the string just goes up into the sky, not connected to anything. I'm not sure how hard it would be to make; maybe I should try it on my own first.

Alternately, you could buy those little thin glow sticks and tape them to the skeleton of the kite, and fly it at night. I wonder if they'd be bright enough.

Well I'm sorry but I'm not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping or real estate.

2009-10-12T21:55:00.003-06:00

I really don't want to ask you what your major is. I don't care where you're from, or what you like to do for fun, or how many brothers and sisters you have, or what you want to be when you grow up. But I'm so accustomed to struggling through conversations with people with no discernible personality that I don't know what else to ask you.

We need some secret sign, to identify each other. Tell me you want to be a masked vigilante when you grow up. Tell me you were raised on a leper colony in the South Pacific. Tell me your life's ambition is to break the world record for tallest tower of Jenga blocks. It's okay if you're a nursing or elementary-education major just like every other girl in this school; just lie to me for a minute.

And when I tell you what I want to do with my life, don't look at me like I'm a jerk for wanting to do something real and then ask if I wouldn't be better off majoring in Business Management. I'm going to keep a list of the names of all those idiot girls, and in twenty years I will write them a letter from Mogadishu or Nepal that will make them loathe the balding, swelling, disgustingly practical marketing executives and middle-managers and accountants they married. They will watch them scream at the TV during Monday Night Football, and quietly contemplate murder.

And to the pretty blonde at the frozen yogurt shop: it's okay to be friendly while you ring me up. I'm sure you get lame passes from BYU guys all the time, and I can tell by your body language and demeanor that you really, really don't want anything to do with me--which is fine, I get that--but you can make eye contact with me, and I will smile and say thank you, and pay for the frozen yogurt, and that will be it.

--Kevin

"A world without nuclear weapons" is a horror story.

2009-09-20T00:58:00.004-06:00

I like President Obama. I've heard him say a few things with which I've disagreed, generally rooted in a spiritual perspective that I can't realistically expect him to share; but he seems like a moral and thoughtful man, the kind of person God can lead, whether he recognizes it or not. I have some interpretive differences with him on the Constitution, and the fundamental role of government; but I've only ever heard him say one thing that I thought was just pure foolishness.

In a speech in Prague last April, President Obama stated his commitment to "seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons". That would seem to be a rather inoffensive sound-byte, a typical safe thing for a politician to say; and I sincerely hope that's all it was, because peace and security are the very last things we would get from a world without nuclear weapons.

We have experienced, since 1945, what may be the single most peaceful, stable era in human history, and it's precisely because of the atrocity embodied in nuclear weapons. Does anyone really believe that a Cold War without nukes would have stayed cold? Consider how close we still came, contemplating our extinction as a species, to going to war anyway. Without that looming horror to dissuade us, it would have been a practical certainty. It would have been a shorter war (let's hope), maybe a more decisive one; but America likely would have left her ascendancy behind on the Russian steppe, just like Napoleon or Hitler, along with a few million frozen corpses.

Or, consider how long we could have fought the Japanese if we hadn't horrified them into submission in 1945. Vietnam is our nation's current metaphor for insane Pyrrhic conflict; but imagine an enemy equally entrenched, equally zealous, and equally comfortable with suicidal guerrilla tactics, only with twice the population and three times the funding. And not trying to kill each other, too. It would have made Iraq look like Granada. (It was to be called Operation Downfall, read all about it; particularly the quote about a "fanatically hostile" indigenous population).

Then consider the broader implications. Buried in Japan through the end of the 1940s, it seems unlikely that the United States could have afforded the epic levels of foreign aid that constituted the Marshall Plan, rebuilding Western Europe and stifling Communist uprisings that were already brewing there. Seeing it all as prosperous and stable as it is today, it's hard to imagine what a desperate and precarious place Europe was in 1945, and how close it came to a disastrous experiment in Marxism.

The Soviet Union would then have succeeded where Hitler failed, creating a "Fortress Europe" and monopolizing the whole productive capacity of the continent; and the world would have spent 60 million lives to trade one insane dictatorship for an even stronger and more murderous one.

Often, similar "what-if" nightmare scenarios are concocted in books and film to illustrate the terrible consequences of nuclear war, and that's important; but it's also important to realize that war has always had terrible consequences, of which nuclear weapons are an indispensable reminder.

Since he gets quoted in fifteen-second sound clips and lacks the privilege of sitting down for a few hours and hammering out an essay, I can see why President Obama would stick to the socially-acceptable bumper-sticker rhetoric that "nuclear weapons are bad". Thankfully, in his actual policies, he seems to be much more nuanced. We don't need to be able to glass the entire planet three times over, and we don't need to piss off the Russians with a missile shield in Poland; 1,500 nuclear weapons is scary enough, and we need them pointed at actual 21st-century bad guys.

As long as this already is, I'll make a separate post on non-proliferation, which is the more philosophically interesting issue.

This is why I don't sleep till 5 am

2009-09-17T02:20:00.002-06:00

I'm reading "The Diversity of Life" by E. O. Wilson; it's a secular humanist's poetic, impassioned defense of the theory of evolution and its ramifications for human activity. It's not the sort of thing I expected to be assigned here at "The Lord's University", but that probably says more about my tendency to be self-deprecating on the Church's behalf than it actually says about the Church.

The book effectively neutralizes some common objections to the theory of evolution--the sort of folksy, common-sense arguments you find in email forwards from the sort of people who still send email forwards: i.e. "there's no way that random chance could have produced complex life"; "the existence of a watch implies the existence of a watch-maker"; "evolution is a theory, not a fact"; evolution's supposed contravention of the law of entropy, etc. And then there's usually like a .gif of a waving American flag or an eagle, or that twisted-steel cross in the wreckage of the WTC towers, or something.

I believe that God can create universes any way that suits Him, and He's told us repeatedly and emphatically that He's not going to give us all the details. So I am theologically and cosmologically cool with it. But I don't think that the theory of evolution as we currently understand it is the final stop; and it's unfortunate that scientists like this author have become so emotionally invested in defending the theory from these shallow criticisms, that they miss an opportunity to criticize and refine the theory themselves, intelligently.

It's a kind of siege mentality, a sense of shared persecution, which inevitably begets the sort of orthodox esprit de corps that is good for some professions, but not for scientists. We like our scientists wildly disunited and doing their best to disprove each other, because that's how good ideas get better (a cultural example of natural selection to which Wilson refers in the book). Still, it's an edifying read, and it raises some interesting questions.

For instance: we observe natural selection as it affects all sorts of individual, immediately-advantageous traits in a given population. The predators with the sharpest teeth, the most efficient digestive system, the keenest vision or hearing, survive to reproduce in greater numbers; and in the long run, that's how species are refined to fill their niche in the ecosystem.

But there are some traits that could only confer reproductive advantage if they were introduced as a system, out of whole cloth. Birds are the best example of this that I can think of. In order to fly under their own power, birds need all sorts of body adaptations that, by themselves, would be an extreme liability to any animal that can't fly. Porous, brittle bones to reduce weight; big, awkward forelimbs with a whole lot of unnecessary surface area; a hyperactive cardiovascular system with a correspondingly hyperactive metabolism, etc.

How could these adaptations have survived for all those millions of years with no payoff? Introduced individually, in the slow, iterative process of natural selection, it's hard to imagine any of those traits even surviving one generation, much less conferring the sort of clear reproductive advantage that leads to speciation. But for some mutant strain of reptile to acquire one crippling mutation, and then another, and then another, and then another, and survive each step for millions of years before finally achieving flight, seems to defy reason.

It's just Bio 100, and I'm sure the question has been asked before, but I've never heard a decent answer. Any Biology majors in the house?

Why Free-Market Health Care Doesn't Work (my dad would disown me if he knew how to use a computer)

2009-09-13T04:21:00.004-06:00

Ever since coming home from the mission, I've pretty well lost my appetite for arguing, which is why I haven't done much with this thing lately. But I've had about all the stupid I can handle from the health care debate, so here goes.

Why Free-Market Health Care Doesn't Work

1. Emergency services do not respond normally to the law of demand which regulates free markets.

When one's house is burning down, consideration for the price of help is minimal. If a "freelance" fire truck were to drive up and offer to put the fire out, one's response would be the same whether their asking price was $50 or $5,000: "Fine, whatever, just put the fire out!" In economic terms, we call this a "perfectly inelastic" demand curve--one that is not meaningfully responsive to changes in price. The potential for extortion is obvious, and there's actually historical precedent for that very situation.

Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman politician, operated his own personal fire brigade on free-market principles: when he heard there was a fire in town, he would rush to the scene with a team of slaves, and offer to buy the home at an obscene discount. If the owner refused, the offered price would fall until he was forced to frantically accept, and Crassus would send in his team to put out the fire and salvage what they could.

There's a similar precedent for contract police forces: the Huns called it "tribute", and organized criminals call it "protection money". That's why we have "socialized" police and fire departments: because we want those industries kept as aloof from the profit motive as possible.

Normal commodities respond favorably to market forces; we get faster computers, more fuel-efficient automobiles, longer-lasting light bulbs, etc. because the consumer has the power to choose between commodities or to go without altogether. It's this power of choice that drives innovation, lowers costs, increases efficiency--which is almost nonexistent in emergency services.

When I had my appendix out last February, I couldn't choose a discount hospital, or a luxury hospital, or the one with the most efficient billing and coding system--I just had to drive as fast as possible to the nearest hospital and beg them to anesthetize me. And even if they had told me at the time that it would cost $12,000 (they send you the bill a couple weeks later), my response would have been no different. I needed to not die, at whatever the going rate for not dying happened to be.

2. True Free-market Health Care does not exist--and shouldn't.

As our system currently operates, free health care is already available to every individual within driving distance of an American hospital, provided that their need is life-threatening and immediate. Emergency rooms don't ask before they reattach your arm if you are a legal US citizen with valid health insurance--nor should they.

But if you want something close to a functional free-market system, at least one side (supplier or consumer) has to have the power to refuse the transaction. It is illegal in the United States for a hospital to refuse treatment to an ER patient on the basis of their ability to pay; so we don't have a truly free health care market, and the very idea of such a system ought to be repugnant anyway.

Still, someone has to foot the bill, and you can bet it won't be the hospitals. To cover the cost of all that free health care (which is huge, given the number of Americans who can't afford it but still need that bullet out), they inflate prices across the board; but the insurance companies don't want to eat it either, so they pass it on to you, enlightened consumer, in the form of higher monthly premiums.

In effect, then, American health care is already socialized; but instead of spreading the cost across the 70% of Americans who pay income tax, we spread it across the 60% of Americans who have health insurance--thus, as the Republicans love to say, "punishing the successful and rewarding the unsuccessful", just the same. The only difference is that--

3. Waiting for the ER Vastly Increases the Cost of Treatment

You could see this all over the place in Memphis: middle-aged, inner-city African Americans suffering from long-term, treatable illnesses for which they couldn't afford treatment until they could sell it as life-threatening to the ER. Obviously, sometimes these diseases were stupid, and manageable if the person had any sense. Obviously I'd rather not pay to pharmaceutically manage someone's diabetes, when the patient weighs 450 lbs. and puts away a 2-liter of soda with every meal--but that's not the choice we're presented with.

We can either pay for the treatment (and maybe some mandatory education and counseling) in the early stages, when it's relatively cheap, or we can pay for it when it's $50,000 to amputate an infected foot. We're not going to let them die of their stupidity; that's just not on the table. Our choice is how we will bear the cost of their stupidity.

And that is, of course, an extreme case. Even then, the moral imperative is clear, but there are thousands of other cases in which people get sick through no fault of their own, and we are presented with the same choice. We're going to have to pay for it either way, but prevention and management is cheaper than emergency care.

Right. Anyway.

What drives me crazy about this whole situation is that the quality of the debate is so unbelievably dim. Republicans have tried to sell it as a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, which is about as anachronistic as blaming it on pirates. We won that war 20 years ago, guys... pick a new villain.

Meanwhile the liberals have phrased their entire defense in the lame language of complacent American entitlement... don't sell me health care reform by telling me what "everybody deserves". Everybody deserves to have a good family, and nobody should get picked on in school, and nobody's dog should ever die; but it happens. Life is hard. The state of the economy is enough to keep that important fact fresh in the American consciousness; so you're never going to sell this thing if you keep talking like a bunch of damn brainless hippies.

Love,
Kevin

Zombie Reagan would have his purulent, decomposing foot up Kim Jong Il's butt right now

2009-04-04T23:54:00.004-06:00

So, North Korea has been talking about launching this ICBM for a while now. Japan, still kind of nervous about having nuclear weapons up in their collective grill, made the fairly ballsy comment that if the missile entered their airspace, they would blow it out of the sky. So that was cool for them, I guess. But then Kim Jong Il did it anyway, and the Japanese decided they'd trust him that it was cool and probably not a nuke. (Yet.)

The missile stopped briefly in Tokyo to make like it was going to punch Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, and is reported to have laughed derisively as he flinched and wet himself, before establishing a stable orbit over the American West Coast. Upon re-entry, the Taepo-dong II missile is expected to move in with Mr. Aso's mom and boast loudly about their intimate relationship whenever Mr. Aso is in earshot.

President Obama issued a written statement promising to immediately talk about this some more, and possibly even petition the UN Security Council to issue another resolution. Mr. Obama is reported to be "not mad, just disappointed" and asked the North Korean President if he even wanted to be friends, or what. He vaguely alluded to the potential for economic sanctions if talking about it a whole lot more doesn't do the trick. Kim Jong Il texted the following response from his fortress of doom, 5 miles beneath Pyongyang:

"OMG NOT SANCTIONS! WE MIGHT BECOME THE ISOLATED, IMPOVERISHED, FAMINE-STRICKEN A**HOLE OF EAST ASIA--OH WAIT! LOL! GTG PLAY WITH MY NEW ORPHAN CANNON, L8R"

--Kevin

I wish I could talk to Collin about this.

2009-03-22T21:16:00.002-06:00

I went to the symphony this weekend with a friend, having bought the tickets a week ago on a manic spending binge from which I am now recovering. The theme of the evening was to imitate the style of the Boston Pops Orchestra, arranging orchestral versions of current music.

Well, "current" for the symphony-going set apparently means "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog", but it was enjoyable. The conductor began with a narration of how the concept of a pops orchestra began in 18th and 19th century Vienna, when that city was essentially the cultural capital of Europe.

It interested me that the city through which practically all of Europe's leading philosophers, scientists, and artists passed for 200 years should now be so seldom heard about. It's certainly not a ruin or a backwater or anything, but it's not the intellectual engine of Western civilization, either.

They played several pieces from this Viennese golden age, followed immediately by a series of iconically American jazz and swing pieces from the 1930s, and I couldn't help wondering what will be remembered of our culture when the spotlight leaves, as it did for the Habsburgs.

Placed as it was, right alongside Mozart and Strauss, the American music seemed to epitomize what it means to be an American--or what it used to mean, or what it ought to mean, depending whom you ask--but it was bold, and brash, and living; the product of exuberant freedom and a unique convergence of cultures. I decided that if that's how we're remembered, it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

I doubt Benny Goodman or Count Basie thought of themselves as the voice of any big ideas; but maybe that's why it's believable. The best artistic expression is hardly aware of itself. The orchestra played "The Stars and Stripes Forever", for which I had no special feelings--but "Sing, Sing, Sing" made me love my country.

Interesting that a nation that thinks of itself as more open, free, and liberal than it used to be, should now have so much to say about angst, frustration, alienation, and fatalism (and that's the good music)--to say nothing of the maudlin pop ballads and commercial jingles we churn out daily.

Maybe in the long run, we'll find that there were some "greats" operating today, and we just have to wait for history to kill all the noise around them. Or maybe our ridiculous pop icons will become enshrined in our consciousness like the Beatles, and in 2040 bearded college professors will hold classes discussing the political significance and artistic merit of Pink and the Jonas Brothers.

(And yes, I do think it's a fair comparison. Have you listened to the Beatles?)

--Kevin

Looks like I'm tougher than Batman's dad.

2009-03-19T19:58:00.004-06:00

I had my first experience with the opera last night: "The Marriage of Figaro" at the Capitol Theatre. I was late, and walked briskly across downtown to the theatre in my suit and sunglasses, and a Hispanic girl said, "You look like you FBI!"

I smiled and said, "Maybe I am," and her boyfriend said, "Keep on walkin'!" Which reminded me pleasantly of being a missionary.

I arrived just as the overture ended and the curtain rose, and I squeezed in between two elderly ladies near the middle of the theater. I was hot from the long walk and uncomfortable in my jacket, but I felt like I wasn't allowed to take it off.

Behind me were two heavily painted overweight women in their late twenties who were apparently writing a review of the performance, and kept talking about whether or not the farce was over-done. They seemed to know what they were talking about, so I tilted my head as if to look across the audience, to hear their conversation better. I wanted to talk to them during the intermissions, but I got the impression that they would have been very impatient with novice questions.

Speaking of which: I didn't know this, and maybe you don't either, but The Marriage of Figaro is three hours long, with three intermissions; and with each one, the audience thinned out perceptibly. Most of the deserters seemed to be middle-aged couples who appeared to be there partly out of a desire to dress up fancy, and partly out of a sense of duty. Interestingly, all the young hipsters and klieg-light homosexuals seemed to be there for art's sake, and endured the whole thing.

It wasn't something that entertained me in its own right. I didn't have to speak Italian to know that the subtitles were seriously deficient--at best a synopsis of what was being said, and with none of the poetry. The language barrier, combined with an extraordinarily convoluted plot, made it a bit like watching a Japanese cartoon: which either implies that opera is really lousy, or that I need to revise my assessment of Japanese cartoons. And I was inclined to agree with the big ladies behind me that it was a little over-acted; although if you're not going to explain what is being said, the actors have to be a little more demonstrative.

So it's conceivable that I might have enjoyed it more under different circumstances. But what interested me most was the audience; a bizarre package of incongruous cliches, literally elbow-to-elbow. Seemingly at home in this sea of wilting elderly faces was the spray-tanned homosexual with the ironically loose necktie and ironically tousled hair, and the "artist", with (seriously) a beret, and a scarf, and a beard, and square glasses. There's nothing better to me than seeing a non-conformist in uniform.

Then there were the once-attractive middle-aged women in expensive dresses meant for younger bodies, for whom "showing some skin" is like airing an open wound, ravaged by ultraviolet radiation and cellulite. And their men, who had so obviously bought opera tickets only under extreme duress; who wore exactly the same petulant grimace as the nine-year-olds who had been brought by their grandmothers.

But in the midst of this darkly amusing human train wreck were a few remarkably beautiful women a few years older than me, having adult conversations with remarkably tall and well-dressed men. Their faces were so bright and expressive and interested--a real conversation--and I wondered where I was going to find that kind of woman; or even just a woman, in general. I have dealt with so many girls who don't know who they are, or what they want, or even what they like, and conversation feels a lot like playing tennis with a brick wall. Just overhearing a real conversation gave me some hope that it could be different.

Needless to say I felt a little out of my element, but I made friends with the two old ladies who sat next to me, and they asked me very kindly about my school and my plans, and gave me a little education (having seen a lot of opera in their time, apparently); which was a pleasant distraction from my admittedly cynical people-watching.

There is something appealing about being out late, downtown, in a suit. Walking back to my car I was simultaneously enjoying that sensation, and thinking about how Batman's parents got whacked, walking home late from the opera downtown. Salt Lake City is no Gotham, but I did have to walk past Pioneer Park, where they keep a port-a-john because of all the vagrants who would otherwise do their business in the alleyways. Nobody else parked that far away, so it was awfully quiet, and I looked over my shoulder once or twice.

--Kevin

I've made a lot of mistakes in my mind

2009-02-21T08:58:00.003-07:00

The writers of Ghost in the Shell really could have skipped all the animated robot nudity and phoned-in plot, and boiled that film down to a very thought-provoking introductory philosophy lecture.

It got me thinking, though, that's the point. If you replace every constituent part of a human being one by one, do you still have a human being? And is it the same human being? You don't need cybernetic implants to face that paradox, though; all the cells in my body die and regenerate at regular intervals, and even they are composed of circulating molecules that are broken, reordered, replaced, recirculated constantly within and among the cells.

As far as anyone can prove, I am a chemical process between trillions of organic molecules, regulated by a self-replicating chemical "program". Under an electron microscope, you can't see the forest for the trees; but that's because a forest is just a word we use to describe a whole lot of trees all together.

If I am only the sum of my constituent parts, then the oldest part of me is seven years old; and what am I, if not a thief, a usurper? My infant body has been dead for fifteen years, flushed out piece-by-piece and excreted by a different sort of body, which was gradually rejected and destroyed by another, and another, and then I killed that one and here I am.

My memories of being fifteen, or eleven, or five, then, are just the ghosts of those dethroned kings, haunting me on the periphery of my thoughts. I didn't do any of that; I stole it from the old and dying neurons I replaced. And when this body dies, you won't notice; but will I? And will I haunt the new possessor of my identity with vague memories of "his" ill-spent twenties?

I reject all these suppositions, but it's a good thing to scare yourself with before bed. A scientist from the 1700s, knowing nothing about radio waves or satellites, might empirically examine a cellular phone in the middle of a call and determine it to be a sentient thing, as he could find no external source for its intelligence. The only evidence he would have against this hypothesis would be the voice's own insistence. Likewise, I believe I am more than just an elaborate, self-amplifying chemical reaction; but my own insistence is all I have to go on.

--Kevin

When the world ends, you and me, we'd just be beginning

2009-02-11T22:54:00.003-07:00

For the last six months, my life has been a slow crescendo of dissonance, until last week I could hardly stand to be inside my own head. But everything is quiet now--I had almost forgotten it could be so quiet. All my fear, doubt, guilt, uncertainty, jealousy... it's all over. I was lying in bed when it happened, and I actually said it out loud. It's over.

Tonight, my cousin Becky opened her mission call, and she's going to Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I wished I could communicate to her what she was about to be given, but the Lord reserves the right to surprise us with these things. She's going to be on the other side of the planet--it's 2 pm tomorrow over there, how cool is that--learning things for which nothing here could possibly prepare her, of which she has only the vaguest idea. But she's so on fire, and I felt it spread into me. We are a blessed people, to be given this kind of adventure.

I feel simultaneously envious of her, and more excited about my own mission. For the first time in my life, I feel like there isn't enough time in the day to accomplish everything I want, and it doesn't feel stressful at all. I can never get my money's worth out of the buffet either, but it's still nice to know that it's all-you-can-eat.

--Kevin

Tem-per-ance (n.) : moderation or restraint in action, expression, etc.; self control.

2009-02-07T20:17:00.002-07:00

I threw out all my video games today. There's about $1,000 worth of aluminum-coated polycarbonate plastic in my wastebasket right now (at least, that's what it was worth when I bought it). Most of them are at least a decade old and don't work anymore, but I didn't like it.

I did it because I couldn't think of any good thing I was getting from them. But it was sentimental; if I had had a wholesome traditional childhood I might have a Red Ryder BB gun or a catcher's mitt left over from those days; but instead I have memories of spending Christmas "Knee-Deep in the Dead" with my 32-bit chainsaw, or playing Ultima 7 at Grandma's house until 5 AM (because you can do what you want at Grandma's house).

So it was a little sentimental. But I just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and I feel a new sense of urgency about my life. After all, I may someday find myself wandering a blighted, sunless hellscape, trying not to get raped and eaten. So I've resolved to take advantage of the biosphere while I've got one, and just make better use of my time in general. It's a little ridiculous, but I'm only about 30% joking. That book scared me out of my mind.

--Kevin

I'm right about to take up extreme sports, that's how bad it is.

2008-11-01T20:10:00.003-06:00

How did you spend your Halloween? I'll tell you how I spent mine: alone in my room, playing video games. Halloween hasn't fallen on a Friday since 2003--my junior year in high school--and it won't do so again for another six years (unless the world ends in 2012, in which case I don't care that much).

Oh well. Next year it will be on a Saturday, so as long as church isn't too early Sunday morning, I will still have a chance to redeem myself. Someone will have to remind me to start developing a healthy social life in the weeks prior, so I'll have somewhere to be.

And it wasn't even a new video game, it was Command and Conquer--yeah, the one from 1995, that I bought when it was brand new. I've long since lost the CD, but the company that made the game is now giving it away free to promote some new game, so... it's a decent diversion. I need a way to shut my mind off once in a while, and I can't smoke pot. But I'll still show up to church pretty bloodshot of eye anyway.

--Kevin

Guess who 0.0000008% of the electorate is voting for!

2008-10-25T22:44:00.005-06:00

Aunt Kathy says I have forfeited my right to complain until 2012. I couldn't decide where I wanted to register to vote--here in Utah or as a mail-in voter in Colorado--and I realized too late that I had missed the deadline to do either. So feel free to consider my opinions illegitimate until then.

Goodness, I'll be almost 26.

So I've become one of those statistics that pundits talk about, and I am, in almost every respect, your typical apathetic non-voter. I don't like the options I've been given, I don't think it will make a difference if I vote, and I did almost nothing to attempt an informed decision (at least in the local and state elections, where my vote may actually count for something), so I would feel a little stupid voting even if I did think it was worth the trouble.

They say it goes PB + D > C... the (P)robability of my vote having an impact, times the (B)enefit or costs of the outcome, plus my (D)emocratic sensibilities that make voting a matter of civic duty, must add up to a value greater than the (C)ost in time and effort I would have to invest in voting.

Obviously it didn't add up. But I do regret that I disenfranchised myself just by turning a paper in late. I was so upset that I barely missed the opportunity to vote in the 2004 election (I turned 18 in December of that year); I felt the same way about that election as I do about this one, but it's somehow more galling to miss out on the opportunity just because I was lazy and irresponsible. Then again, maybe they require voter registration so that lazy, irresponsible people don't make the decisions that determine the course of the free world.

Wait! I am already registered to vote in Colorado, and apparently I can still call for a mail-in ballot. Which means that my voice may still be heard, and mine may be the single deciding vote that wins the great state of Colorado's three electoral votes for some candidate, when I heave a sigh of resignation and check the box next to his name. Three out of the 538 total. And if by some freak chance he's got between 267 and 269 electoral votes already, then I will have elected the next President of the United States. Unless there's a faithless elector, or polling irregularities, or the Supreme Court gets involved. But yeah, assuming nothing like that happens.

In all honesty, I'm mostly just embarrassed about having been so vocal about politics when I was underage, and now that I can vote, I forgot to do it. It kind of makes me feel like a tool. I guess I could have just not said anything, and everyone would probably assume that I voted. But it's going to be too late for that in a few seconds when I click "Post".

--Kevin

I'm society's fault.

2008-08-31T22:47:00.003-06:00

The prodigal son wasted his substance with riotous living--trading in 'the good life' for some funny stories, cool scars, bad habits; maybe an embarrassing disease or two. One might imagine his elder brother occasionally romanticizing those adventures, staring into space on a dull day in the pasture, or after a round of fruitless bickering with his parents. It would be hard to live at home, nothing really your own until your father dies and gives it to you.

Surely he didn't envy the pleasures of the debauchery; but maybe the audacity, the wildness. I'll reiterate that I have no idea how a grown man could live at home until his parents died... although in those days I don't suppose you had to wait that long.

I wonder how our generation will be regarded by the Saxons, Amorites, Mongols, Incas, etc. with whom we'll inevitably mingle in the afterlife. I can only imagine how they'll interact with one another, but I bet they'll all agree that we are about as weird as humans can be, and still be considered human.

The thought occurred to me at work, as I listened to my iTunes; mouth dry, eyes unfocused, and utterly vulnerable to suggestion. My mind was active, but absent... like the times when you're exhausted and just about to fall asleep, or just about to wake up, and you can't tell the difference between conscious contemplation and dreaming, and you're almost totally oblivious to your surroundings. In that state, I was thinking about Kyra, and found myself possessed of radically fluctuating feelings, changing at intervals of 3 to 5 minutes--and realized that I was unconsciously absorbing the attitude of whatever song was playing at the time.

Of course that's an extreme example, but I don't think you could find any historical culture where the adage that 'life imitates art' could possibly be as applicable as in ours. Everywhere there's music playing, everywhere a television on; a constant stream of someone else's assumptions and ideas force-fed to us, almost from the womb. I grew up imitating the witty, passive-aggressive banter I saw on sitcoms; developing wildly unrealistic romantic expectations based on films where people meet, fall in love, and consummate their relationship in 90 minutes or less (with time for a dramatically-significant fight somewhere in there); and I don't know how much of my teenage unhappiness I can attribute to that, but it can't have helped.

"People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos; that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss... did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

Rob Gordon (John Cusack), High Fidelity

Previous generations had penicillin, the atom bomb, constitutional democracy... our contribution to human civilization will be a generation as obnoxious and self-involved as Will and Grace, as puerile and delusional as The Notebook, and as habitually mopey as Dashboard Confessional.

In other news, I just learned that the Wikipedia article for "Nice Guy" links directly to the article on "Involuntary Celibacy". And I just quit my job, and school doesn't start for another week. So there's been a lot of free time lately. See above.

--Kevin

Apparently my subconscious is a grade-A sociopath.

2008-08-30T12:06:00.003-06:00

My dreams never seem to have a lot of symbolic merit... generally they're like bad action movies. Last night, I was crouched behind a brick mailbox outside a bank, holding a black snub-nose .38 Special. Kyra and my mom were sitting on the ground, leaning against the side of a sedan parked in front--Mom with a revolver like mine, and Kyra with a semiautomatic. I had to show Kyra how to use hers. (Which was fun, to be honest.)

I can't remember what we were trying to steal, but I don't think it was just a simple bank robbery. Anyway, I was still checking the cylinder when about a dozen guys ran out the front door with Kalashnikovs. I guess these were the bad guys, because I started shooting, and took out two of them (with only six rounds... I'm quite a marksman), and then we ran off, and I woke up.

I fell back asleep almost immediately, and found myself again crouched behind cover, facing a highway onramp that was barricaded by a tanker truck hastily parked across it. Inside the truck was a nuclear device, and my mission, oddly enough, was to either steal or detonate it. You know, whichever is easier. I had a vague awareness that I was the bad guy, but I didn't really care. The driver of the truck was heavily armed, and had me pinned down behind whatever I was hiding behind. So I had to sneak around, climb up the overpass, and wait for him to give up and drive away. As the truck approached my hiding place, I found an MP5 submachine gun (just lying around, I guess), and took a few careful shots at the windshield and the engine block.

The driver panicked and lost control of the truck, crashing it into the side wall, whereupon I jumped out from my cover and ran toward the cab, firing wildly to keep him pinned down. He stumbled out of the truck, clearly disoriented, and I grabbed him from behind and choked him out.

Then I looked up, and realized I was playing Counter-Strike at a party with a bunch of people I didn't know, except for one or two old high school acquaintances. Which explained my laid-back attitude toward the morality of what I'd been doing, I suppose. And then I woke up for real. It's been a weird morning.

--Kevin

Looks like the Republicans are being punished for nominating another godless Episcopalian.

2008-08-29T23:59:00.000-06:00

McCain's choice of vice president is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as everyone's response to it. I'm not sure what I think about it yet. Everyone else seems to have an opinion though, and all the noise from the pundits has been pretty revealing.

Here's what I know about Sarah Palin: she's 44 years old, she's Pentecostal (which is at least as weird as being Mormon) and she's been governor of Alaska since 2006. So far her approval ratings in that office have been in the 80s and 90s--having only won the office by 48.3%, which is interesting.

Naturally, her youth and relative inexperience may force the McCain camp to attack Barack Obama on issues other than his youth and relative inexperience, but I think that needs to happen anyway. I don't think most people are threatened by Barack Obama's inexperience. The ideological foundation of democracy, what we're taught to believe from childhood, is that we, the people are clever enough and wise enough to govern ourselves--that we don't need steady, conservative, wiser heads managing our affairs. Whether that's entirely true or not, it runs deep in our collective feelings, and we love to vote for a rebel idealist, untouched by the establishment.

At best, these attacks on Obama's inexperience have been a gift-wrapped donation to Obama's campaign. They give him license to rage against the partisan political establishment as if he were not a part of it; they divert attention from his depressingly orthodox voting record, and practically make Obama's argument for him, that a vote for McCain is a vote for the status quo, a vote for four more years of disastrous incumbency.

But what fascinated me most about this decision was the utter hypocrisy it revealed on both sides of the melee. The liberal pundits called Gov. Palin a "featherweight", claiming that McCain's choice was the dying, desperate gasp of a badly mismanaged campaign (a claim to which there may be an unfortunate amount of truth).

Here's the deal, though: she has just as much political experience as Barack Obama, but her time has been spent in the executive rather than legislative branch of government--which, if you value experience at all, is very significant. A legislator may learn a lot about the executive by close proximity and observation, but I can learn the same things watching C-SPAN. I would place more value on someone who had at least some on-the-job experience. In the words of Mitch Hedberg, "It's like if I worked my a-- off to become a really good cook, and somebody said, 'Hey, you're a really good cook... can you farm?'"

Perhaps McCain's selection was a brilliant gambit, to tie up his detractors. They have attacked his decision, naturally; but now he can ask them to clarify the reason for their double-standard. Surely they wouldn't attack the inexperience of a VP candidate who is just as seasoned as their nominee for the Presidency... so what is the real difference? Is it just partisan gamesmanship because she's on the wrong team? Is it (gasp) that she's a woman?

But judging by the McCain campaign's performance to date, I doubt it's anything of the kind. Maybe they are just grasping at straws, trying to steal some novelty. It depresses me, because I really do believe that John McCain is a good man, and he'd make an excellent President; and in a perfect world, that would be enough. Even in our world, it's keeping him afloat in spite of his pathetic salesmanship, his association with the incumbent party, and his almost-Messianic opponent; but I don't know how long it can hold up.

There have been so many deep, substantive ways in which he could have taken command of this campaign, instead of all these half-hearted attacks on Barack Obama's character and capability (made while insisting that he's really a nice guy). I really feel like I could be doing a better job, if only someone would ask me. If he could just find a way not to look constipated every time someone turns a camera on him, it would be a start.

--Kevin

Well, I try my best to be just like I am...

2008-08-26T00:01:00.000-06:00

My family and friends enjoy a perennial, good-natured exasperation with my cavalier (or inept, depending who you ask) management of my personal affairs. For this reason, I'm occasionally treated like a precocious but ignorant child... amusing, lovable, but not really fit to be let outside unsupervised. If there's one thing about marriage that fills me with dread, it's the thought of binding myself to a woman who feels this way about me.

I recognize that I can be pretty absentminded and hasty, and I don't always consider all the angles, but I really do believe that I could find a way to stave off destitution and misery without all the babysitting. And even if I couldn't, it might still be preferable.

And I hate the word "underachiever", with all its connotations. It's a polite way to call someone lazy and sloppy, and imply that they lack ambition. I love to work; I just hate drudgery. I'm meticulous, even obsessive, when I care about something; but I believe that life's tasks ought to be afforded time and effort appropriate to their significance in the bigger picture. Some stuff just doesn't matter at all; and it has to be done, but I see no reason why it has to be done perfectly or well. Maybe your peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would be more delicious if you spent an hour each time, measuring out the ingredients and ensuring a liberal and even distribution thereof, carefully applying and reapplying them and leveling your eyes with the table to check the thickness of the peanut butter; but I don't know, maybe you've got stuff to do.

And some people spend their whole lives on the details of these things that are about as important as the peanut-butter-to-jelly ratio on your sandwich--money, status, the opinions and expectations of others--and they wind up old, and with no better idea of what they're doing here than they had when they were our age. Not because they're stupid, but because they've been too busy to think about it. And then they tell me I ought to take a little more pride in how I put my sandwiches together, and offer themselves as living examples of how the course of my life might be corrected; and I love them too much to tell them how deeply disturbing I find that idea.

Of course we have to devote some attention to money, to grades, to society's expectations--as well as, indeed, the proper composition of our sandwiches--but with a healthy recognition that there are more important considerations.

So, in view of the alternative, I am grateful to be the way I am. Maybe I'll miss some opportunities, and I'm sure by the time I'm dead I will have spent thousands of dollars just forgetting where I put things; but I'll be dead. I enjoy being a dreamer, and a thinker, and possessing talents that are useless to employers. I like the fact that my happiness is not dictated by someone else's assessment of my performance. I like that my blood pressure stays at a very respectable, comfortable level most of the time. And I really don't need or want all the nonsense that I could have if I traded it all in.

--Kevin

I used to joke about the purgatorial nature of community college. It's less funny now.

2008-08-21T13:54:00.006-06:00

Yesterday was my first and last day at Salt Lake Community College. I've determined that community college is really just an elaborate scheme to punish bad students and bad teachers by way of each other. The freshman girls, obviously enjoying their emancipation from high school dress codes, were visibly freezing in their camisoles and their tiny denim shorts, chewing gum and text-messaging and glowering periodically at the professor. There was the obligatory group of guys in the back of the class who practice that bizarre, smirking mock-politeness that seems to come so naturally to them. I was on the set of some hackneyed teen movie and the only one without a copy of the script.

Western Civ was the longest fifty minutes of my life to date. Our teacher, Lolene, prefaced a long string of her personal opinions with a practiced explanation that we would be "leaving our opinions at the door", because in this class we would be discussing and analyzing the facts. Luckily there was a student in the front of the class who used her every statement as a pretext to express some outlandish and tangential opinion, peppered with unrelated names and dates so he would appear informed and well-read. Examples: "back in the 90s, Russians were all drunks... but I'm not anti-Polish or anything"; "It's like Sean Hannity puts his face next to the Statue of Liberty, and now he thinks he's up there with the Founding Fathers--his book was just like Mein Kampf".

It reminded me of street contacting homeless guys in Memphis--that degree of craziness, but spoken in an even, erudite tone by a South Asian kid with square glasses and a green canvas shoulder bag. Which was almost funnier.

As obnoxious as it was, I could have handled it; but I got home and discovered that this nonsense was going to cost eight thousand dollars. So I immediately dropped all my classes, and I'm going to apply to LDS Business College as soon as possible. It may not be a better education, but it certainly can't be worse, and it'll only cost $2600. Naturally my grandpa, who likes things planned out and consistent, is subtly galled by this development. I know, because he keeps popping in to my room to give me new reasons why SLCC isn't so bad. Not that he's even hinting that I should reconsider my decision; he just likes to dispense vague counsel. I count at least five times today, and the first two were at 6:30 and 7:00 am; he woke me up to say, "You know, eight thousand dollars really isn't that expensive, for a year of school."

My rebuttal: "Can we talk about this later?" mumbled through the pillowcase.

"Well, I'm leaving soon. It really isn't that much, it's only $2,000 a quarter."

"We've got two weeks, Grandpa... can I go back to sleep?"

"I just think you ought to think about it, that's all."

And he slowly goes back to whatever else he was doing. I can expect this routine to continue until I am successfully attending classes somewhere (and maybe a little while after that). Which may be as long as a semester. But... it's $100 a month, and I don't have to buy groceries. So I can handle it. Philippians 4:13.

--Kevin

We're the people that we wanted to know, and we're the places that we wanted to go

2008-08-20T22:14:00.012-06:00

I'm pretty sure that Ron Weasley is at least partly inspired by the character of Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations.

And another thing: before leaving Dallas I had lunch with my great-aunt Kathy, who is the family's resident free-thinking, bra-burning apostate here in Salt Lake. She subscribes to the Tribune and makes pervy comments about guys a third her age, which is a little endearing once you get used to it. The last time I saw her was before my mission, and I recall being annoyed with her reflexively liberal opinions and seemingly inflated opinion of herself... but this time it was different. My mission was a long, slow inoculation against bluster, and it just doesn't bother me like it used to; so this time I could enjoy all the good things about her.

I found that we actually have a great deal in common, and we see so many things the same way, especially the absurdities of Mormon culture, and that especially within our family. Of course she, like everyone else in my family, is very astute and insightful about the problems and weaknesses of everyone else in my family. It's more like anthropology than gossip... I like to consider the causes and motivations of all the weird attitudes and behaviors my close relatives exhibit.

I found Dallas basically the way I left it, which was comforting. The Collisons' house still has that weird, wonderful smell, with all its nostalgic associations, and I slept on the same squishy maroon pallet I slept on every night I stayed there since I was eight years old, with the same noisy fan spinning off-balance and keeping me awake. The dogs are still around, albeit grey-bearded and arthritic, and increasingly on Mom's nerves. I hope they never move away.

Scott and I went to Starbucks with Ujaala and Boris... we exploited their laid-back attitude and squishy chairs without buying any of their addictive stimulants. And realized later that we were a Catholic, a Mormon, a Muslim, and a Jew all hanging out... a veritable "People who are going to hell according to Jerry Falwell" sampler platter. Ujaala was very nice, and very funny, and I think my blind, unreasoning, impossibly long, unremittingly cruel infatuation with her is just about over; which is pretty significant to me, as you can imagine.

I had a bacon cheese Whataburger for the first time since my experimental psychotropic bacon cheese Whataburger in the summer of 2005, and found that it was as delicious as I remembered. Not as mind-blowing, but just as delicious. I talked to my friend Tommy who is now a Marine reservist and has really fascinating things to say.

It's weird to have a personal friend whose life for the next four years will actually be directly influenced by the impending presidential elections. For me, it will be an occasional curiosity when the news is on. Maybe something to be recreationally indignant about when talking to like-minded friends... but for him, it may be the difference between spending a year or more in a jagged desert hellhole, or every fourth weekend in San Angelo.

The weight of our republic, and all its blithe and seemingly arbitrary decisionmaking, falls almost exclusively on guys like him. The fact that he supports McCain says a lot about his character, I think. Honestly, I've regarded my right to vote with some indifference... I'm not about to get shipped off anywhere, I don't even pay taxes (so far, knock on wood). but when I think of how significant it may be to him, I want to think more carefully about it.

There's more to say, but I don't know quite how to say it, and I'd like to do it justice.

--Kevin

"Mo' money, mo' problems, Stanley. You of all people should know that."

2008-08-12T09:31:00.003-06:00

I've recently noticed that a person's quality of writing seems to have an inverse relationship to that person's quality of life. Last week was hellish. But I didn't make creative use of my misfortune at the time, and things are better now, so I have no great expectations for this entry.

I lately have a little more money than I'm used to having... and the effect on my life is uncanny. I've been living a pretty simple life for the last two years; I've never had a particular interest in the things that money can buy--admittedly because all my necessities (and most of my whims) have always been provided for free--and as recently as a few months ago, I honestly couldn't think of anything I would buy even if I had money.

But now that it's there, and it's "mine", I am suddenly aware of innumerable opportunities to rid myself of it. If you saw my last bank statement, you would think someone had stolen my debit card. I've never thought of myself as a materialistic or profligate spender, but I'm having to re-evaluate some things.

In other news, I just registered for my first semester of college, and I only signed up for classes that interested me. English, Great Books, Western Civ, and Beginning Chinese. Soon I will be able to communicate with over half the world's population in their native tongue--assuming I get my Spanish back up to snuff. I am so excited it hurts.

--Kevin

Tired. Tired tired tired.

2008-08-04T11:06:00.003-06:00

I think everyone should meet my family. I understand intellectually that other families are probably just as quirky and idiosyncratic as mine, but it's kind of hard for me to imagine that being true. On our first night in Keystone, as we were all being introduced, someone from the bride's family wondered aloud why all of us seemed to have recycled Irish Catholic names, and I couldn't think of any answer except, "Pride, in defiance of all reason." I don't think any of us could tell you why we like being Dolans so much; but it's definitely a big deal.

Fortunately, Justine (my cousin's new bride) is just as weird about the Irish thing as he is, so the wedding was tinged with old pagan Celtic accoutrements. The reception tables were named for Celtic fire festivals--and there were like eight of them, which seemed like an awful lot to me. Apparently our people have always been pyromaniacs. My uncle Patrick, who is a priest in Denver, performed the ceremony with a mix of very mild Catholicism, pre-Christian Celtic wedding blessings, and stand-up comedy.

I was a little kid the last time I'd seen the groom, and in the intervening years all I'd heard about him was my uncles' hazy and embellished stories of his adventures in DEVGRU (the erstwhile Seal Team Six), breaking necks and "playing with toys we won't see for fifteen years". He'll ship out for his tenth tour of duty in Afghanistan later this year. So naturally I was expecting him to be at least eight feet tall and engulfed in flames when I met him. Turns out he's like 5' 9", and he doesn't look much more crazy or dangerous than anybody else in our family. In fact, he didn't look nearly as imposing as Justine's father and brothers (who came to the wedding in their Marine dress blues), but there must have been twenty medals hanging from his jacket. When we were all together, he told us he does "radio work", but it was more a joke than a cover.

After the wedding we all got together with our guitars in the hotel lobby and my dad and my uncles played Irish drinking songs--not that any of them drink anymore, but Irish music is drinking music by default, as far as I can tell.

There have been a lot of good stories this weekend, but I need a nap.

--Kevin

God is love.

2008-07-23T21:02:00.006-06:00

Life has turned out pretty good so far. I am excited for school next month, because I still have post-mission weirdness clinging to me, and I see a Utah singles ward as something like immersion therapy. Every time I talk to a girl I feel like apologizing--something like, "I know I'm being weird and awkward, I swear I'm really a very normal, well-adjusted person"--but of course saying that would be even more weird and awkward, and I end up in this angsty teenage feedback loop inside my head until I feel like breathing into a bag or something.

But who am I kidding? It's so very convenient to blame it all on the mission, as if I was once a man of effortless confidence, and it was somehow stolen from me when I spent two years talking to strangers all day. And the trouble certainly isn't rooted in any stubborn vestigial qualms about flirting or contact with the opposite sex, I promise.

Which leads me to wonder how much this talk of "post-mission struggles" hasn't been concocted by guys like me who were pretty awkward to begin with, wanting desperately to believe that their social ineptitude is a recent and temporary phenomenon, whose conclusion is just around the next corner.

I had a kind of epiphany in this vein earlier in the week--that maybe it isn't my mission, maybe it isn't any one or two circumstances, maybe it isn't going to get any better, maybe it's just me--and the thought was so oppressive and incessant that I felt like going back to bed. I hope you've never had this kind of nagging anxiety; it's like having a neurotic, inbred Pomeranian in your head, just yapping itself breathless all morning; and unlike a real Pomeranian, you can't punt it out a window.

But it was mercifully Stake Temple Day, and a few hours in, I had a very different sort of epiphany: I realized that even if I am an incurably neurotic mess, I am still God's incurably neurotic mess, and he intends me to be happy regardless. It occurred to me that my happiness might be contingent on mental and social normalcy in a "natural" world; but Jesus took care of all that in Gethsemane, so I don't have to worry about anything but obedience and repentance. Every problem in life, no matter how trivial, I can take to the Lord and He will either heal it, or help me to endure it.

As I consider the depth of the Spirit's answer to my problem, it's almost funny; it was a fairly trivial problem in retrospect, and as you can tell, I obviously took it unbelievably seriously, to merit this kind of response from the Lord. You have to marvel at a Being who can succor the beggars and widows and lepers--who has seen and felt the sum of human suffering--and who can still talk to me about my little anxieties without even a hint of sarcasm.

--Kevin

I can make this pencil disappear.

2008-07-19T14:06:00.005-06:00

(SPOILER)

So everyone's talking about how fantastic The Dark Knight was, and I've got a theory on that. The more I think about the dialogue, the less impressed I am with it, especially Batman and Harvey Dent's lines; Dent's descent into madness seems like a bit of a rush job, and his conclusion that chance is "the only morality in a cruel world" seems to come out of nowhere (which is why he has to make a strained explanation for it when confronting Batman and Lt. Gordon).

Meanwhile, Batman's affected cigarettes-and-diesel rasp worked well enough when it was scaring the piss out of mobsters in Batman Begins, but it seems incongruous when he's growling about high-minded ideals and all the nice people in Gotham who "still believe in good." He went from a brutal, vengeful, uninhibited vigilante to a Boy Scout who happens to cling to some gothic aesthetic sensibilities.

But, like everyone else, I loved this movie, and I think it's because of humanity's vestigial reverence for Christ. Our favorite heroes are the one who demonstrate what He exemplified, who remind us of what He was to us when we were with Him. He stepped down from glory to walk with us, incognito as it were, soliciting no worldly recognition and shunning it when it was offered, and willingly agreed to endure our ridicule and abuse so that He could save us.

Harvey Dent, then, is our symbol of all the righteous men who confront evil and inevitably fall--not merely failing to overcome the evil, but actually being corrupted by it themselves--who are redeemed by Christ. When Commissioner Gordon's son asks why Batman should take the blame for Dent's crimes, the answer is, "Because he can take it." Any man could be a scapegoat, but Batman could endure the penalty and go on saving Gotham even as it hunted him down. Commissioner Gordon is his lonely prophet, like Jeremiah or Mormon; his only liaison with the world who can't know him yet, the light-bearer, the truth-teller.

The Joker, of course, is corruption itself... one of the most apt portrayals of Satan you could find, because he loves to murder, but what he loves more is to tempt; and even at his most sinister and psychotic, he's likable. He effortlessly fabricates "reasons" for his physical and mental disfigurement to humanize himself, and just as casually calls himself a "dog chasing cars" to conceal his motives. In claiming to be utterly directionless, pleading insanity, so to speak, he convinces Dent that he isn't the real enemy (even as he is deliberately corrupting Dent to the bone); but just like the adversary, the Joker is utterly consumed with a compulsion to prove that we're all just as depraved as he is, if you scratch deep enough. "It's just like gravity," he says, "All you need is a little push."

But even watching him do it, with the litany of contradictory lies all laid end-to-end before you, he's still almost sympathetic. His gruesome appearance and wild brutality aren't nearly as chilling as the fact that you laugh at his jokes.

We loved this movie because it's a parable of a true memory, even if that memory is nameless and buried in some. It's the war in Heaven, the Atonement, the Church's flight into the wilderness... it means something to us because it happened to us; and there's still some part of us that remembers it.

--Kevin

A whiff of hope?

2008-07-16T20:26:00.002-06:00

Read an article about how some soldiers in Iraq are getting restless because it's too quiet over there, so they want to go to Afghanistan where the "real war" is. It's almost too much to hope, but what if we're almost done over there? Like, actually done, not just leaving because we've had enough. And I met a girl I like, and Batman comes out tomorrow. Life is so good.

So it looks like I'll be going to SLCC after all... and I need thirty credit hours to erase BYU's memory of all my vagarious teenage misdeeds. They tell me that's a whole year. Anybody know a way to make that quicker?

--Kevin

Fireworks is cool.

2008-07-05T17:49:00.004-06:00

We didn't have the most iconic, Norman-Rockwell Fourth of July... it was just Mom and I, and neither of us takes very naturally to this sort of thing. I patriotically worked eight hours, and we spent most of the day in the house, watching movies. Mom felt like we "ought to try to mingle, shouldn't we?" so we did attend the parade (the last half hour of it, anyway), bounced around to the different parties we'd been invited to (because everyone knows Dad), made conversation, etc.

All I have ever seen around this town are severely sun-oxidized hippies and lesbians in their fifties; but for some reason the parade drew a crowd of shockingly beautiful women with navel piercings and lower back tattoos, and those big ugly sunglasses that girls like nowadays. It's remarkable how someone can be so attractive and simultaneously so repellent... like how a moth would feel about an electric bug zapper if he was smart enough to see it coming.

The town is small, but they say ten thousand people come to see the fireworks show, and I believe it. The streets were lined with bumper-to-bumper DUI offenses as far as the eye could see; I can only imagine the pandemonium on Route 285 after the show. God bless America.

--Kevin

Give me the modestly-hot one

2008-07-02T20:53:00.006-06:00

I'm starting to get a little claustrophobic in these mountains. I miss driving in a landscape that will leave you alone and let you think. Driving in Texas was like an out-of-body experience; you suddenly realize you've been going fifteen minutes and you have no idea how you got where you are. My life in general was like that in Dallas, lost in my head most of the time, and I would wonder vaguely whether all those daydreams were worth the inattention. Or the car accidents.

The natural beauty here is crushingly omnipresent, towering overhead, demanding to be noticed. It huffs at your failure to constantly and adequately appreciate it as you pass by on your prosaic errands. And of course it also demands that commuters drive around it instead of through, so every journey becomes a 25 mph scenic cruise. Texas' beauty was like a tasteful perfume, or that girl in the teen movie who is only "ugly" because she wears glasses and overalls. It was Biddy to Colorado's Estella, Betty to her Veronica. Always available, but never obtrusive.

Or I might just be pissed off because I've got allergies. Yesterday I woke up at 4:45 AM (on accident) and climbed up my mountain one-handed, so I could read my scriptures at the top while the sun came up over Denver. It sounded more majestic and profound in my head than it actually turned out to be... the pages kept blowing around, and the sun was rising directly in my eyes (which was sort of the point, I guess), and I was coated with all kinds of plant spawn from the brambles I'd waded through to get there. Naturally my paranoid and xenophobic immune system began forcibly expelling all the tourists from my mucous membranes, resulting in a rather symbolic emergency flight from all that nature to the nearest Wal-Mart (thirty scenic minutes away) for some Claritin.

When American civil order inevitably collapses and bands of roving paramilitaries sack that Wal-Mart, I will no doubt have to trade my dried venison and gasoline for allergy medication.

--Kevin

The vicious cycle of hereditary geekiness claims another victim.

2008-06-28T17:35:00.008-06:00

So I'm teaching my kid brother to play Dungeons and Dragons, and I'll tell you why. When I was a kid, I played a lot of video games, way more than was healthy. But when I was done playing video games, I would take the stories and ideas in the games and do my own thing with them. I've found cartoons I drew in kindergarten based on watching my uncles play Ultima VII, and I'd write little stories about the characters. In my defense, this was before I knew how bad an idea "fan fiction" is.

Anyway, I played the games because I liked the stories. I guess that's a bit like saying you read Maxim for the articles. But if you get me started playing a video game, even if it's really terrible, I have to finish it so I can see how it ends. If I had the same persistence about real literature, I would probably have finished the two books I've been reading intermittently since February.

Here's my point, though: I'm having a difficult time seeing any redeeming creative merit to the stuff Alec plays. He's into the anime thing, so it's all pretty much rubbish. I don't think the Japanese even have a word for "hackneyed" or "hyperbolic" or "nonsensical"... unless that's what the word "anime" means.

So I'm getting him into D&D because if he's going to be a geek, he's going to be an American geek, dang it. And since he can't see the pictures and the game doesn't tell him what to do, he'll have to do something besides mash the "X" button all day.

In seriousness... I asked him the other day what he would wish for if he had three wishes from a genie, and he couldn't think of anything. I asked him what he would do if he had a million dollars, and he looked around the room, spotted his iPod, and said, "Um... buy... songs."

I love... lamp. It was exasperating. So we're going to grow him an imagination. It's going to involve the repulsion of kobold invaders and finding out who murdered the elven high priestess, among other things. I know you won't believe me, but I'm writing a pretty wicked story for this... we're going to tackle concepts like industrialization (they call it "going bad" in Narnia), contradictory moral obligations, individual and universal apostasy, political intrigue... the kids are getting impatient because they want to actually play, but I'm frankly having too much fun getting ready. And just because it's in the context of being a Dungeon Master does not make it stupid. It just makes me stupid for telling you about it.

--Kevin

All dead white boys say "God is good"

2008-06-16T16:20:00.002-06:00

My dog is lying on the floor asleep and his legs are twitching.

We believe in something called "the measure of [one's] creation." From my extremely rudimentary and Wikipedia-based understanding of Eastern philosophy, it seems to correspond roughly to the concept of Tao or Dharma: essentially, it's the sum of what we're here to do and be, and carries with it the idea that every created thing has a purpose in the divine economy.

My dog, I've learned, was born to play fetch. He can chase a stick until it falls apart in his mouth; all day and all night if we'd let him. I've never seen anybody enjoy anything as much as he enjoys chasing a stick. So now, because he's stuck in the house and bored, and because he's a good dog, God is giving him stick-chasing dreams. I'm a little envious.

I've been thinking about this, because it's evidence that the happiest things in life are the ones that are filling the measure of their creation--however simple that is. In some ways it's general--we're all meant to keep the commandments, we're all meant to love and be loved, etc.--but it's also very specific. Part of the measure of my Dad's creation, for example, is to work outside with his hands. He doesn't always enjoy it, but it's not entirely about enjoyment. It's just one thing he's meant to do, and another lifestyle would probably be unnatural and ill-fitting.

It leads me to believe that our role as stewards of God's creation (and as stewards of one another, our brothers' keepers) is to help others fulfill the measure of their creation. That's why we become fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and children. It's also why I'm going to take the dog out to play fetch when he wakes up.

--Kevin

Brains are weird.

2008-06-11T16:51:00.003-06:00

I love it when a CD corresponds to a vivid and specific time in my life. Mom is listening to The Strokes' Is This It, which I bought the summer after junior year. It reminds me of all the crap I stapled to my walls and hung from the ceiling, the cushioned litter I made out of that old shopping cart, driving around back when gas was cheap and you could just drive around. Now that I think about it, between the shopping cart, the bathrobe, and the stringy, unkempt long hair, I may have been doing Derelicte before Derek Zoolander made it cool.

More than any of that, though, it gives me a weird little phantom pain... I remember how I felt listening to this CD and associating the lyrics with my life at the time, but I can't remember what I was thinking about. It's a shortcut in my mind that used to lead somewhere important, and doesn't anymore. But I still remember all the lyrics.

Remarkably, I don't think my angst at the time had anything to do with a girl. I'm going to listen to this CD and drive around again.

Change You Desperately, Desperately Want To Believe In

2008-06-05T12:49:00.004-06:00

I've been resisting talking about (or even thinking about) the election season until I saw anything discernible or meaningful about it. It does interest me that the past two presidential elections, and now the Democratic nomination, have been so incredibly close and contested. It seems likely that the parties have achieved such a mastery of opinion polling and tailor-made rhetoric as to render their candidates qualitatively indistinguishable to the average voter.

But what concerns me more is the personality cult that carried Barack Obama to the nomination. Not so much for what it says about him, as what it says about our national state of mind, and fitness to govern ourselves. A rousing, emotional call for unity, a promise to restore our national dignity, extravagant populist rhetoric and promises... the fact that so many have responded to such easy demagoguery is a little disturbing.

He said something on the subject that I think was maybe more truthful than he knew. Referring to the diverse throng that assembles to watch him speak: "It's like I'm just the excuse."

He's right about that. People don't want Barack Obama; they want to believe. The past eight years have made us so necessarily, heartbreakingly cynical; but we're a nation of idealists at heart. So he hardly had to sell his campaign at all--we're just begging to be persuaded. And maybe Barack Obama is a decent guy, but it wouldn't matter if he wasn't. His playbook will take a leader in any direction he wants to go, as long as the mob is weary and vulnerable enough to swallow it.

--Kevin

All I know is, Katherine Heigl ain't bad.

2008-06-03T19:51:00.004-06:00

So I just watched "27 Dresses" with my Mom. We were waiting out rush hour and there was nothing else on. Mom picked it, I didn't.

It was standard romantic-comedy boilerplate, for the most part... women will never get tired of Jane Austen. Ten or twenty interchangeable plot iterations, a steady stream of handsome, disposable actors, and you've got a multimillion-dollar money tree that will never, ever, ever stop producing.

But they got pretty brave with this one... the stubborn, arrogant love interest (this week's Mr. Darcy) actually rants about an unscrupulous multimillion-dollar industry entirely dedicated to milking the sentimentality and romantic expectations of women. He's talking about the wedding industry, but I have to believe this was included as a joke.

The movie did lead me to wonder, though, whether there could really be beautiful women out there who become secretly infatuated with the authors of well-written articles they read in newspapers and magazines before they find out that the author looks like James Marsden. It sounds too good to be true, but one can't help hoping.

--Kevin

Upper Management Potential

2008-05-30T21:41:00.003-06:00

Well, my little brother and sister will now be home all day for the next three months. I will miss the quiet. Maybe I can recruit them to do my job for a tiny fraction of what I get paid to do it. I think it might be illegal; if the people in charge find out about it, maybe they will let me do it in the Dominican Republic for a lot more money.

It's been a good day.

--Kevin

It's the same on the weekends as the rest of the days

2008-05-26T21:19:00.004-06:00

Scott and I decided that the main difference between Jim Halpert (of The Office) and ourselves is the team of professional screenwriters who keep him unfailingly smooth and charming. So we will move to Los Angeles and start an internship--not a paid internship, of course--for aspiring screenwriters. We will then solicit donations to a scholarship fund (as motivation for our 'students') from which we will skim off enough money to live in Los Angeles and date the women we charm with said creative team. It's foolproof.

It was good to have Scott around; he helped me to be a little more patient with the course of my life. Instead of fighting the limitations of living in my parents' basement with no friends, I have decided to work the advantages of my position: for example, there's very little to hinder me from working ten hours a day, six days a week, and earning myself a lot of financial freedom for college (when I'll actually have a social life to spend it on).

I've been killing myself looking for something with which to fill these seemingly endless days... I've seen it as a terrible burden, when really it's one of the coolest things I've got going. I worked ten hours today, and still had time to go to a Memorial Day party, meet some cool people, and jam with an amazing cellist. That's about all the excitement I need in a day.

On a different note, something pretty great happened this Sunday. So a couple weeks ago, before I had my epiphany about the Blazer scoutleader thing, one of my kids (John-Michael) walked past me in the chapel and gave me the worst stink-eye I think I've ever got from an eleven-year-old. I hadn't figured eleven-year-olds to be complex-enough creatures to contain the kind of loathing his look communicated. Pretty discouraging.

But I've been doing a lot better with the kids, and this Sunday, John-Michael walked past my aisle during sacrament meeting, gave me a nod, and held out his hand for a discreet low-five. Pretty much the coolest thing that's happened to me since I've been here.

--Kevin

The Good Life

2008-05-21T11:33:00.004-06:00

So my best friend since third grade is in town, and we are staying up late, eating junk food and playing video games. Mostly it's the same as it ever was, except for the single Heineken he temperately swallows as we sit down to watch Doctor Zhivago at 3:30 AM. I don't think I've ever seen anyone drink just one beer before. He's always been a temperate sort of person. Or maybe it's just because it's my dad's beer.

And he cusses like I did in high school, idiosyncratically, dropping bombs like they're commas. But other than that it's the same, or better because he's been to college and lived in Europe, and has a lot more to say now--which actually works for him, because he isn't a jackass like most people who have been to college or lived in Europe. It's nice to have a conversation that doesn't feel like playing tennis with a brick wall.

I taught with the missionaries for the first time since coming home this week, and Scott came along. Gave me a powerful feeling of nostalgia for my mission, accompanied by a not-entirely contradictory sense of gratitude that it's over. Scott asked good questions and I tried (and failed) to abridge my answers like Elder Ballard told us to in General Conference. I've never been good at "leaving them wanting more."

Talking to Scott about his past three years makes me so desperate to get through this summer and start that college thing. Mostly because I miss girls. Just having a reason to be around them and talk to them. The singles ward is nice enough, but it's like dying of thirst on a raft in the Pacific... the seawater is beginning to look more and more palatable, but I know if I drink it'll only make me thirstier.

--Kevin

I have cool friends.

2008-05-12T21:17:00.003-06:00

Today a friend gave me some food for thought. At FHE we were playing one of those group guessing games like Mafia, and when it came to Peter's turn, he quietly declined. It was pretty clear he was being a "conscientious objector", but nobody asked him why and we kept on playing. Well, he walked out of the room for a while--gathering his courage, I suppose--and came back in and 'wondered aloud' (in a very humble, euphemistic Mormon sort of way) whether we could so whimsically play a game like this if the subject was something like unwed pregnancy, instead of murder.

We hadn't thought anything of it, of course, which may have been his point. Of course it was entirely good-natured--the game could just as easily have been about throwing pies or something equally apropos to the silliness of the game--but we were blowing each other away with shotguns and hand grenades and disintegrator rays, trying playfully to think up more and more over-the-top methods of killing each other.

I'm still not sure whether it was such a big deal (the evening came to a cold, awkward stop after he spoke up), but it's definitely something to think about. I couldn't see Jesus playing our game. Maybe it's because we've all been raised so far away from any real violence... we've only ever seen murder in the context of obviously-contrived entertainment, so that's how we see it. Sex, on the other hand, is something that is very much a part of our world; and certainly closer to our real contemplations than killing anybody. We've seen (at least in the lives of others) that it is extremely serious business. So maybe we're a little more careful how we speak of it.

I think it's probably cultural, too... if I had been playing the game with a bunch of guys, I would be more inclined to laugh off Peter's comments, but the idea of pretending to maim and kill women, now that I think about it, is viscerally distasteful to me. Why? Because violence among boys was rather encouraged when I was growing up... you stick up for yourself, don't be afraid of a fight, etc.; but you never, never, ever hit a girl. (That rule made absolutely no sense to me around about 4th grade when the girls were bigger than us and generally started the fights.)

I admired him for saying what he did, even if I'm still trying to decide what I think of it. He went about it in a very gentle, non-judgmental way... just encouraging us to think. We were having a lot of fun, it must have been a hard thing to do.

--Kevin

President Hinckley, it turns out, has always been incredible.

2008-05-08T21:24:00.006-06:00

Added it up this morning, and I've spent about $180 on music since I've been home. How about that. Which means I've spent about ten minutes every workday paying for CDs. Putting it that way, it doesn't sound that bad at all... and in fairness, I've been replacing my decimated CD collection (a casualty of leaving it with my family for two years) and catching up on stuff I missed. And furthermore, it's my only expense apart from burnt offerings to the petroleum gods, so I feel pretty satisfied with my fiscal responsibility. So I don't want to hear it.

The other day I listened to a talk that President Hinckley delivered at BYU, back when he was a young apostle and the Vietnam War was still only six years in, with six more to go. It was a telling artifact; I, like most people my age, haven't heard much about that conflict except the shameless punditry we read in the history books... the predictable lamentations, 'if only they had known what we know'. But here was a brilliant, deeply compassionate, inspired man, speaking on the subject without the benefit (or maybe the prejudice) of hindsight.

He spoke on the conflict in exactly the way I can imagine him speaking on ours... refusing to pass judgment, just reminding his audience of the horror of war, and the humanity and brotherhood of all the involved parties--including the enemy, and the arguably-culpable politicians. He watched President Nixon speaking before a firing squad of cameras and microphones, wiping the sweat from his forehead, and said he felt a sudden compassion for the man so terribly accountable for so much. No appraisal of the man's leadership or decisionmaking, or useless speculation as to whether he "deserves what he gets". Just sympathy for a human being in a really difficult position. And how terribly ironic that the mess was made by Kennedy (whose teflon-coated 'legacy' has yet to wear through), while Nixon--the one who actually got us out of there--is one of the most famously despised presidents in our history.

Politics can be so dehumanizing, but the next time I see President Bush, I'm going to see flesh and blood. A child of God deserving of compassion, even if I think he's ridiculous. Or maybe especially if I think he's ridiculous. There's my brother on live television, and he's doing a really hard job, and the whole world hates him for screwing it up. And maybe he's not a good person... maybe he's an incompetent, greedy, selfish crook. So much more reason to feel sorry for him.

But the most interesting thing about the talk was his description of the ambiguous feelings of the people for the war:

"I have spoken quietly in private conversation, never publicly, some rather trenchant criticism about some of the things I have observed. I have been in situations where I have tried to comfort those who mourned over the loss of choice sons. I have wept as I have turned away from the beds of those who have been maimed for life. I think I have felt very keenly the feelings of many of our young men concerning this terrible conflict in which we are engaged, but I am sure we are there because of a great humanitarian spirit in the hearts of the people of this nation. We are there in a spirit of being our brother’s keeper. I am confident that we have been motivated by considerations of that kind, and, regardless of our attitude on the conduct of the war, of our feelings concerning the diplomacy of our nation, we have to live with our conscience concerning those whose freedom we have fought to preserve. We are there, and we find ourselves in a very lonely position as leaders in the world, criticized abroad as well as at home."

I've always resisted the comparison of our war to Vietnam, but there it is. All the moral uncertainty, the struggle of conscience, the terrible feeling of responsibility and loneliness. And here we are, the media and the government and the public playing the exact same roles as if from a teleprompter, and all of us making the exact same mistakes. It was so enlightening to see a view of that conflict that allowed for the possibility that intelligent, informed, compassionate people could have supported it (even as their misgivings grew about the way it was conducted).

It's ironic... because our culture tends to assume that we are intrinsically wiser and better-informed than all previous generations, we feel little obligation to learn anything but the most obvious lessons from our history... so when our present turns out to be a lot more complicated than those silly, elementary problems that our grandparents faced, we find ourselves totally unprepared--and we end up doing all the same dumb stuff.

It's a great gap in our study of history (at least in every class I took). We learn the facts, the events, the consequences... but I suspect it's at least as important to understand how the people in our history books felt about the history they were making; to have at least some degree of empathy for them, if we're going to learn anything from them.

"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4:6)

--Kevin

I didn't lie and I ain't saying I told the whole truth

2008-05-07T20:50:00.003-06:00

All at once, I fell back in love with Modest Mouse tonight. I was driving home from church in the dark, and listening to "Black Cadillacs", and suddenly I remembered a night more than three years ago: I was at work, sitting in my cubicle in the dark after everyone else had left, and talking to a girl who it still hurts to think about, a little. I have to tell myself there's another girl like her somewhere, but I'll believe that when I see it. We'd just finished a pretty terrific fight... or maybe we weren't quite done, I can't remember.

We both popped in "Good News For People Who Love Bad News" on our respective CD players, and hit play at the exact same time to listen to "Black Cadillacs" together. I had spent a good week telling myself she wasn't worth the trouble... I'd even found a beautiful, insipid placeholder to give myself something else to think about. But that song almost kept me following her around until graduation. I wonder if she remembers it.

--Kevin

"She laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth."

2008-05-06T20:55:00.006-06:00

I went up to CSM this morning with folks from the singles ward, to help students move out of their dorms for the summer. I encountered a captivatingly attractive brunette who told me her major was civil engineering; to which I replied, "That's amazing, I was way good at Sim City back in the day." Maybe she only laughed to keep me enthusiastically hauling her TV and mini-fridge down the three flights of stairs to the parking lot, but she had the prettiest laugh I think I've ever heard.

I discovered that her mother was a less-active member of the Church, which led me to lament how differently it all could have gone. She would have been lovelier, really, without the tiny shorts and spaghetti straps, and I could have met her at church a month and a half ago. I was tempted to make it my business to right this wrong, but I neglected even to get her name.

And then I went home and filled a spreadsheet while watching old Star Trek episodes pretty much all day. I know I need the money, and part of this mortal probation is "eating bread by the sweat of thy face"--though in this case the metaphor is so loose as to be a little ridiculous to me--but it's hard to sit there all day, listening to my heart beat and wondering how many more are left in there.

--Kevin

Spitting out that freshly-bitten bullet

2008-05-04T21:49:00.005-06:00

I had my first date post-mission! And my first real "first date" (like, asking out a girl I don't know, having a plan, picking her up, taking her to dinner) ever. I couldn't eat all day, so I just paced around trying to busy myself with preparation; but it turns out there isn't that much preparation involved in taking a girl to dinner. So I just paced around, trying not to feel sick.

I found my paralyzing anxiety much more surprising than you probably do. I'm not an irrational person. I'm not even shy, really (he said to himself). I understand perfectly that I know how to have a conversation. Nothing serious. Just eat something expensive, open the door for her, and talk to her like she's a human for two or three hours. No big deal. I get that. But there's still this scared kid inside me that doesn't.

Well it was almost perfect. The Lord answers prayers, even silly adolescent ones. Had I been possessed of greater faith, I would not have lost my way to the parking garage, and then lost my way inside the parking garage (from which my date extricated us), and accidentally driven down the wrong lane on the way home when I missed our exit and had to get on the service road. Couldn't find the restaurant either. And then, even better, I had to explain to her that the prospect of asking her out actually terrified me, and I had guiltily hoped that she would be busy. That she was my first real date ever, and I was scared out of my mind.

I can't help it. I say what's on my mind, and it only gets worse when I'm nervous. So naturally I explained that to her (one of those terrible, inescapable feedback loops). But she responded like she knew the real me... recognizing that I wasn't necessarily on my A-game, and I would probably be a cool person if I could just relax. She ordered some extremely adventurous Mediterranean dish and ate the whole thing (while I thought to myself, "How can you eat at a time like this?"). I got this delicious penne pasta with italian sausage and could barely even pick at it. But other than the dumb stuff I did and said because I was nervous, it was perfect. She was funny, and she laughed when I tried to be funny, and we were honest, and had a real conversation about things that really matter.

And it's no wonder, because I found out early on that I was dealing with a professional. My new friend has been on 62 first dates (I forgot to ask whether I was number 62 or 63). She pretty much knows how this works.

At the end of the night, I completely forgot to open the car door for her (which I explained to her for the reason I've already mentioned), and walked her to her doorstep. She said, "Wow, you've never done a door scene before!"

And I said, "Wow, I guess I haven't..." and silently panicked. I had no idea what I was going to do. A kiss on the cheek or even a hug was too much, but a handshake would just be ridiculous, so I choked and just kind of... said goodbye. I thanked her for a nice night, said I'd see her at church, and just sort of... walked away. But that's better than a handshake, right?

Miraculously, my body waited until I got home to freak out; but the moment I set the keys down on the coffee table, my intestines made a fist so tight that I was up for two hours, just rolling around in the bedsheets, praying desperately and nursing a Pepto Bismol nightcap.

But she was fantastic, and I'd do it again. At church the next day I showed up late (because I got lost, again) and she came and sat by me, and sang a pretty harmony (but got the words wrong), and we chatted and it was nice. I don't really get it, but God is awfully nice to me.

--Kevin

Got central heating, and I'm all right

2008-05-02T20:01:00.003-06:00

My perennial and general lateness apparently extends to pop culture trends, and I can't entirely blame that on my mission. Still, I almost always show up. I have become a genuine Youtube addict. Mostly because it is cheaper than buying music and safer than stealing it. Still, I have disciplined myself to use it (and Facebook, and every other innocuous waste of my time) only while I am working. That sounds screwy now that I put it in print. But as long as I'm required to sit inert and unfocused for eight hours at a time, I may as well enjoy it.

Peter recruited four other people to go with us to the top of Table Mountain, and we piled into somebody's 15-seater van after breakfast this morning, and hiked up there. I discovered that the girl I was (mostly) there for is moving back to Arizona on Tuesday. So I have to find her before that and buy her dinner... if for no other reason than that she was so darn cool to me & there ought to be some compensation, don't you think?

--Kevin

Barack Obama is not the Messiah.

2008-05-01T13:56:00.004-06:00

I admire audacity. Not like "the audacity of hope", that is for sissies. Audacity like a criminal mastermind. Those guys are always getting away with the most ridiculous crap, and it's not like they're that much smarter than anyone else, they just have the cojones to try something totally insane, which is why no one expects it, which is why it works.

I suspect that the world would be a much more disordered place if most of us weren't instilled with a deep fear of failure and punishment. Our justice system doesn't even take care of all the stupid criminals, let alone the smooth ones. I'm pretty sure most of us can (and would) get away with a lot more than we think, if we just had the audacity.

Maybe it has to do with motivation. No one understands their potential until they have a good reason to test it... when the dread of the act is overpowered by some stronger compulsion. I've never been hungry, never been in love, never had my ideals demand that much of me. I'm not a megalomaniac, as far as I know. I'm generally pretty happy. What do I want to be audacious for?

Maybe for fear of being dull... or for the sense I have that my life would be better if it were more exciting. But what's the price? People who make the news seem to be almost universally unhappy... and the most driven, bold missionaries I knew in the field were generally the most miserable, because they were driven by fear: fear of shame, fear of disappointing their families, fear of their great-great-great-uncle Willard Richards... It looked like righteousness, but any slave can work himself to exhaustion. You didn't have to look much closer to see the malice and selfishness in it... like they were so afraid of missing heaven that they didn't care who they had to trample to get there.

But then there were those elders who were just as bold and driven, but driven by faith; and those were the ones who loved the work. They trusted a promise, staked their claim on it, and always came out on top. That's the kind of audacious I want to be. Now I just need to find some wild exploit to which there's a blessing attached. I'll let you know when I think of something.

You kids and your video games.

2008-04-29T21:18:00.003-06:00

I think Babylon spent the last two years hard at work to screw up everything that used to be cool. This girl I had a crush on from kindergarten to senior year is now one of those college girls. She was so smart, and so funny, and so painfully attractive... the kind of girl for whom my feelings were almost idolatrous. She wasn't ever into me anyway, but man! To live in a world where mixed drinks had never been invented. Would she still be on the arm of that sleazy 28-year-old with the salon-styled facial hair?

The miserable thing is how unremarkable that transformation was... really, I'm surprised when I talk to old friends who haven't wholeheartedly plunged into "college life." And you can't go anywhere on the internet without facing a soft porn assault, and the shows that I catch my kid brother and sister watching are as vulgar as they are inane. I sound like an old man. I don't have any illusions that the world was much better before I left... maybe it's always been like this, but it still sucks.

I guess I just miss being oblivious. I can't wait to get to Provo... it'll be like a cold morning when you get out of bed way early on accident, but you catch yourself in time to curl back up, and the blankets are still warm. A return to the sweet embrace of monastic disconnect from the world at large. Who am I kidding, I will probably hate Provo. But it's fun to imagine myself enjoying it.

--Kevin

Life is good.

2008-04-28T22:11:00.003-06:00

My first FHE at the new singles ward tonight, and it was pretty much amazing. Everyone is just cool... and maybe in a weird sort of way, but I like it. Example: on the way into town I saw a little rocky mesa that I thought would be cool to climb, so I asked Peter if that was Table Mountain (for which the Table Mountain Student Ward is named). He said yes, and I was like, "Well, is it a good climb?" And he said yes, and I said, "Cool, because I'm thinking of getting up there after the Dead Day breakfast Friday morning."

So he says, "Hey, that's a great idea! Let me think, is there any reason why I shouldn't commit to that? No, I'll be done with finals then. You know, I bet there's a couple people that might be into that. I'll see what I can work out."

Of course I was planning on doing it alone, and hadn't really even insinuated that I wanted anyone to come along... but why not?

Everyone seemed to be that way... totally uncomplicated. Like when Shasta meets the Narnians for the first time in The Horse and His Boy: "You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly, and didn't give a fig for anyone who wasn't." We had a really good spiritual discussion at the beginning, and then just joked around and got to know each other for an hour after that. Jokes were funny if they were funny, and there was none of the Pharisaical posturing and "top the mission story", and nobody trying to demonstrate their righteousness by how easily they can be offended.

So it's been a pretty rockin' weekend. I got my first paycheck, a cute girl took my tie off in Sunday School (kinda weird but kinda cool, once again) and I'm excited to climb that dang mountain.

--Kevin

From Modest Mouse to John Mayer in one night.

2008-04-25T23:55:00.000-06:00

So this is funny, given yesterday's post. I went to a dance tonight (a luau actually, how dumb does it sound), and I actually had an amazing time. A bunch of people from the Golden singles ward--the ward I'm supposed to be going to--totally took me in, like I've been hoping someone would for the past two months. Even without the obvious counsel to go where you're assigned, I think that's where I want to be. I went up there last Sunday to speak, and before the meeting started, this guy Peter walked up to me and told me he would pray for me while I spoke; and the whole time, I could feel it. Then Annie, an excitable, happy, pretty redhead came up to welcome me to the ward, just in case I decided to stay. Just solid, cool people. The real deal.

So tonight I found Peter hanging out by the drinks, and we talked about how awkward these things are, and how dancing "just ain't me", and he introduced me to some friends of his, and dancing just wasn't them, either... so that was cool. We just talked for a while, joked about how the music hasn't changed in the eight years since I've been to a dance... and then Annie and this little short girl Esmeralda dragged us out and got us to fake it. Couldn't even figure out the electric slide and the chicken dance, but it was fun!

After a while, I felt like I was finding my groove, starting to enjoy myself, and Esmeralda said (in the nicest way possible) "Hey, at least you're dancing!" Lest I should be exalted above measure. All the girls were really good--like, half the time I wanted to just step back and let them do their thing--but the cool thing was that none of the guys knew what they were doing, and we all felt stupid.

Started talking to this one guy (don't think I got his name)... the basics, how weird the RM thing is, how awkward church dances are... and he doesn't dance either; but then he sees these two girls standing by themselves, grimaces, and says, "All right, I'll take the one in the white, you take the one in the brown," and I grimaced, and we did it, and it turns out Jennifer in the brown was pretty cool.

There was a really pretty dark-haired girl across the floor who was just getting down... like, almost too much. and I said, "Hey man, do you know her?"

And he was like "Nah... you should go ask her to dance!"

As much as I don't believe in girls being 'out of my league', I declined. Well, he kept bringing it up, and finally the last slow dance came on, and he said, "Look, dude, you better ask her or I'm going to."

So I did. Turns out she's pretty cool. Lives downtown, studying nursing at CU. She didn't say anything mean or try to kill me.

It was like all my weird social anxiety fell apart, and all of a sudden nothing was a big deal. Just a couple cool people was all it took. I almost didn't go tonight... and I remember now my first interview with Bishop Christiansen, who said, "Follow the Spirit, elder... if He tells you to go to that stake dance, you be obedient and go."

I almost laughed out loud at the time, but tonight was a big deal! Everything feels different. A friggin' luau; go figure. But I really, really needed it, and it almost didn't happen. Life is so good.

--Kevin

Your morning cup of neurosis.

2008-04-24T21:55:00.000-06:00

I stayed up late last night and read over my old blog entries, and decided I really miss having friends like in high school. The mission is kind of anomalous because you're rarely just 'hanging out' with people of your choosing... it's been almost three years since I've just called somebody up and went out and did something.

Three years... that's crazy. I can't wait to get settled at school and not be in this weird in-between place anymore. Guys like my grandpa can just be alone and do things they like to do, no problem. I need a social life, and Facebook isn't cutting it for me. Cool as it is.

So I go to all the singles stuff that the Church does... I still draw the line at dances, but everything else. I had been optimistic that the return-missionary thing would make it easier to feel normal around Mormons; but if anything it's more complicated. People have expectations about what a mission is supposed to make of a kid, and I always get the feeling that I'm not meeting those expectations. I'm probably just being paranoid.

I'm getting a renewed understanding of what President Hinckley said about the needs of converts... how members of the Church are "more different than we often think we are," etc. and it's difficult for converts to fit in without help. I don't think I've ever connected that to my experience with the Church, but it fits perfectly. I know the gospel is true, and I consider myself to be pretty orthodox... but I still feel like a visiting anthropologist at church.

Here's what I need: I need someone to validate all the weirdness I see, and confirm for me that it is in fact really weird and I'm not crazy for thinking it's weird. And the longer this goes on, the crazier I actually sound. I should go to bed.

--Kevin

This is the good life.

2008-04-19T22:31:00.005-06:00

I got out and made it HAPPEN this week. I cleared a new pasture for the horses (with a tractor), I helped build a fence, I climbed a mountain (twice), I learned to play five new songs on the guitar, I started a conversation with a girl I didn't know at church, and I beat FOUR viderogames and we had a Quantum Leap season 4 marathon. I didn't work very much at all, and it was very good.

Oh and I got the cops called on me! See if I don't do things right when I think to do them, they won't get done. So when it occurred to me to vanish into the mountains for a couple hours, I didn't think to tell Dad or leave a note or anything, I just left. So when he saw my truck pulled over on the shoulder down 285 toward Denver, and the keys left on the seat and the passenger door unlocked (whoops), he assumed I'd been murdered or something. By people who leave the keys on the seat and the passenger door unlocked, I guess. So he called Morrison's finest, and they showed up a minute or two before I did; and I said I was sorry and I'd leave a note next time, and they said it was refreshing to see a concerned parent, etc. and tore off in search of traffic offenders.

And I was a little sorry. I should have left a note. But something happened! I didn't just sit inside watching the clock all day! He always got on my case about wasting my life on the computer, and I finally feel like taking his advice, and it's baffling. Kevin? Outside? On purpose? Surely not, this must be a 9-1-1 emergency. So it was a little cool not to be so predictable, honestly.

He'd be so much madder if he knew how long I was sitting at the cliff edge, occasionally glancing down and wondering what he was doing down there, and then shrugging and going back to my book. Had to have been a good hour... he said he was waiting for three hours, and it wasn't that long of a climb. But I definitely made it known the next time I went for a hike.

And the place I found is pretty much perfect. Level enough to climb without equipment, but steep and rocky enough to be scary and fun... like, you probably won't die, but you could if you weren't paying attention. And I'm still a little afraid of heights, so the peak is a rush... it's probably about ten feet square, and always windy, and you can see straight down almost 360 degrees, nothing but pointy rocks all around for a hundred yards.

So I got some good praying done (especially on the way down), and I brought my scriptures and tried to imagine what it was like before the temple, to go up into the mountain for sacrifices and prayer. I tried to study up there, but I think I'll have to hike a little farther to capture the experience. From my perch I could still see (and even hear, which was strange to me) the rush-hour highway traffic coming out of Denver into the mountains. It was even more distracting than it would have been on the ground; the loudest noise being the one you're trying hardest not to hear, I suppose. This last time I was probably a hundred yards higher, and it was still impossible to pay attention. But across the valley there's a ridge of higher, broader peaks, farther from the road. A longer climb, but probably an easier one. Will definitely have to remember a water bottle next time.

There's so much to like about this way of living. Being free to disappear for three or four hours whenever it seems like a good idea; never having to shave or wear shoes unless I want to; the scope of possibilities: like, I can have a really productive and amazing day, or I can play Xbox if I feel like it. I can wake up at 6:30 or sleep in until noon. Life is good!

--Kevin

The day I live deliberately, it will probably kill me.

2008-04-10T21:38:00.004-06:00

It baffles me that I could have written daily in this thing two years ago, when I had so much less to report. Not that a whole lot is going on now... working from home has its perks, but it might be nice to have a reason to leave the house.

Something occurred to me, though, the other night. I was getting ready for bed, and noticed a plastic tub full of photos on a countertop; so I sat crosslegged on my bed for about half an hour and went through them all. Most of them were from circa 1998, which doesn't seem like that long ago until you see what ten years has done to everyone. Brooklyn was barely an armful, with no hair except that wispy cowlick that stood up right on top of her head. Alec was a messy-haired, beautiful little toddler, full of hilarious idiosyncrasies. (He's in middle school now, where they beat the idiosyncrasies out of you... so it's not as funny anymore.) Dad's hair was black... I can't imagine that it ever could have been as black as it apparently was. Probably best not to be any more specific, but suffice to say we've all gotten older. Except Mom. She just never seems to get any older. (I would say that even if it weren't true, but it is.)

And you know what? I was a cute little kid. If I had been able to accept the notion that I was a little kid, and not agonize so much over my lack of maturity and self-control, not try so hard to get it ALL FIGURED OUT, I bet it would have been more fun. I remember how badly I wanted to be the age I am now... and here it is, welcome to it. I wish I could remember what exactly I'd planned to do. Seems to me I had 21 more or less nailed down back then.

So I went upstairs, and Mom was lying on the couch, watching Frasier reruns. She pulled her feet in so I could sit down, and we just talked. Eventually her attention drifted back to the Cranes, so I sat with my folded arms and chin resting on her knees, just staring at her for a minute. It struck me that in ten years, when life is totally different again and I'm living the life she and Dad were living in 1998, this is what I will wax nostalgic about. And I will wish idly that I had savored it a little more. So I memorized my mother lying on the couch in sweats, makeup off and ready for bed, at age 40. Maybe it's the progressive, ravaging deforestation of my head that has me thinking this way, but lately I feel like getting all I can out of 21. I even worked out today. (A little. And then I played video games a little.)

--Kevin

It's a living.

2008-03-27T10:45:00.003-06:00

I worked out last night that if I sleep nine hours instead of eight every night, and I live to be 75, I will have lost nearly five years of my waking life (16-hour days). Even with eight hours' sleep, I'll spend 25 years of my life totally inert. No wonder the scriptural injunction to "cease to sleep longer than is needful."

I've spent the last few weeks staring at spreadsheets all day long, repeating the same 10-second process ad nauseum. I don't know how the assembly lines of the late 19th century functioned without television. If I didn't have something to anesthetize my sense of mortality and purpose, I think this job would make me insane. But my head is swimming with mysterious disappearances and amnesia and other hackneyed daytime-TV plot devices. Who needs friends when I've got Hurley and Charlie? Who needs a girl when I've got Kate, our inexhaustible sexual-tension dynamo? And with adventurous exploits like Jack's and Locke's to spectate, why bother going outside?

I don't believe Satan invented television, or even serial television drama per se, but it is certainly a handy diversion with which to steal life away. It's the magic wand, the fluttering fingers, the incantation that momentarily draws your eyes away from your wallet. It sure doesn't feel afterward like I've spent ten hours in absolute silence, pushing buttons a monkey could push, and with as much comprehension of what I'm doing.

I've been reading C.S. Lewis again, and it's very interesting to revisit his ideas after a two-year hiatus. In his words, "Nothing makes an absent friend so present as a disagreement." He can be so perfectly right when he speaks experientially, and so totally off the mark when reciting dogma or speculating.

He loses me completely (as he must, by definition) when he starts talking about his unknown-and-unknowable, abstract, theoretical God; and yet he knows the intimate, Fatherly, "the true and living God", by his own experience. His means of reconciling the two is simultaneously so obviously contrived, and yet sincere... which is most religion, I think. Honest people trying to make sense of nonsense. I wonder how offended he would be if he knew of all the Mormons who see him as a 'noble heathen', kept from the truth only because he knew not where to find it.

--Kevin

Life is always better and duller than I make it sound.

2008-03-21T13:33:00.000-06:00

Some things are going wrong, but a lot is going right, and everything that's going wrong is going wrong in a very predictable way. Which makes it better, just knowing that it's to be expected. I miss feeling like my life matters to someone else. I miss having something meaningful to do with myself. I know I'm supposed to be saving for college... but I haven't needed money for anything in so long that it's kind of meaningless to me. I just work because it's a respectable way to spend my time, and I won't get yelled at.

But I'm getting more creative. I finally got my temple recommend renewed today, and President Jibson had good counsel. He said, "You get home from your mission and the spiritual part of you becomes, well, just a part of you. And it feels so wrong, naturally; but eventually you have to realize that this is the way God planned it, this is how we're meant to live." It was like Eden, in retrospect... no life, no problems, nothing to worry about--but we aren't meant to stay in Eden forever. So here I am in the lone and dreary world and trying to get used to it (but not too used to it).

The main talk in church this week was on sustaining your bishop and accepting callings, which was helpful because immediately afterward, Brother Bickmore called me into the clerk's office to ask me to serve as the Blazer scoutleader. I asked him, "So... the blazers are the--"

"Eleven-year-olds, yeah."

My stomach ate my heart, but after listening to a forty minute talk on the subject, you say "yes", and enthusiastically, if you can. "Someone will be there to help me get started, right?"

"Of course!" he said, with a look that said, What kind of people do you think we are?

So I got there early tonight (hoping to draw first blood, I guess); and it wasn't all that bad. Kyle (who is very excited for the changing of the guard) was a lifesaver. The key is low expectations, I think. You spend fifteen minutes just trying to settle them down, then you give up and spend ten minutes pretending to tie knots, and another ten minutes wrapping it up. No sweat. AND I SAW A GIRL THERE! She was kind of cute, so I took Kyle aside and said, "So... this could be really dumb--how old is that Rachel girl?"

He shook his head and gave me a commiserating look. "Yeah. she's sixteen."

So here I am doing the math on my hands: '17, 18, 19, 20, 21... five years. Five is a lot of years.' That's a good three out of my range; but not out of his, apparently, because he followed up with, "But she's really mature for her age." I can't believe sixteen was five years ago. I assumed I would feel cooler by now.

I don't think I've met a single girl in the 18-to-25 demographic yet. There have been false calls... you see a girl across the chapel who looks like she might have potential, and then you walk past her in the hall and notice that she's in her early thirties and wearing a wedding ring and toting Baby Number Four on her hip. Disheartening. But it's only been a month, after all.

And I made the happy discovery that it's a lot easier to re-learn the guitar than it was to learn it. It was exhilarating to feel it all come back. The prospect of paying taxes and buying gasoline is having an impact on my political opinions. I'm going to have an adventure this week.

--Kevin

Is it good for man to be alone?

2008-03-12T15:57:00.008-06:00

My homecoming talk was a welcome kick in the pants. I hadn't really given it any thought until the night before, assuming that I would just get up there and talk, and the Lord would provide. It wasn't until 6 pm Saturday evening that it occurred to me that my studies hadn't been all that meaningful lately, and that I hadn't taught in almost two weeks; that the Lord might expect some kind of effort if I wanted to fill 40 minutes with something coherent. So I panicked, and ripped open my scriptures and my journals, trying to remember what I'd been doing for the past two years, and I spent at least an hour just holding my pen over a blank sheet of paper, getting nothing.

I started to get nervous. Having lost the "mantle" of missionary work, maybe the Lord wasn't going to work so closely with me... maybe I was left to myself, without strength. I've heard it from so many people, how different life is after the mission, but I always chalked it up to excuses and superstition. God doesn't leave us, we leave Him. But I just spent an hour, praying and staring at a blank piece of paper, getting nothing.

Then I began to realize how distracted--how hungry for distraction, really--I had been since I'd come home; how caught up in congratulating myself and listening to everyone else congratulate me. I hadn't heard the voice of the Lord because I hadn't been listening.

As soon as I thought this, the Spirit seemed to say, "You've forgotten me; but I haven't forgotten you." And in the most gentle, fatherly way, "It won't do you any good to cram for this like you're the one giving it. Put up the books."

I knew it was the Spirit, because it confused me, and I tried to argue. I said, maybe with a little frustration, "Well, then what? Do I just forget about it, and go play video games? Read Harry Potter? What do you want me to do, if not study?"

And He said, just as gently, "Find another way to prepare. Find a way to get close to me, don't worry about the talk." Act like you really believe in the Spirit's guidance, basically. So I thought about it, and the only thing that came to mind was to clean my room. It was stupid, but I couldn't think of anything else. But as I went to hang up a shirt, all of a sudden I was flooded with scriptures. "I have engraven you on the palms of my hands"... "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." The Spirit said, "I'm not going anywhere. I will show you tomorrow that I am still your God." And right after I said my prayers that night, as I was sliding under the covers, He told me my outline. A hint.

My High Council interview was the next morning at 6:30 a.m., so I had a good three hours of down time before church. Right when I got home, I sat down and it all spilled on the paper, all the points, all the scripture references, and so abundantly that I probably spent more time cutting it down than I spent writing it. And it went beautifully. Best talk I've ever given, by far--and I don't mind saying that because I was as surprised as everyone else that it came out of me.

So I've been trying to do better, trying to pay more attention; and now, I'm not sure the Spirit isn't even stronger than it was for most of my mission. In the field, so often it was, "You know your duty, now go and do it." But here... it's great, the Lord knows I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing, so He's been wonderfully specific. It's exhilarating to get the answers right when you ask the questions, almost before your lips can form the words.

Now I just need to ask Him how to meet a girl. The Institute class I attended yesterday... wasn't exactly what I'm looking for. But there's something to be said for going to a class (especially a religion class) for reasons other than the chicks.

In other news, I spent my very first day almost entirely by myself. All the family attention has dissipated... it was nice, but I'm glad to have some quiet time. I actually talked to myself yesterday, out loud, for the first time in at least two years. Just driving home from Institute, talking to myself. It led me to wonder (aloud): "You'd think that people who talk to themselves would have better social skills... you know, given all the practice." And I laughed at my own joke. Very loudly. It was fantastic. It's the little things you miss.

--Kevin

P.S. So I realize in retrospect that this post is mainly about how I hear voices and talk to myself. Moral: Kevin needs you to find him a date.

P.P.S And I further realize that I just referred to myself in third-person. Life is so good.

Funny Things Happen Here.

2008-03-05T17:32:00.001-07:00

I've been filling my head with heathen music, discovering bands that are all old news to you. I'm going to wear this iPod out if I don't accidentally wash it with my khakis first.

Before leaving Salt Lake, my uncle Mark took me to do service for President Packer (Boyd K. Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles). The creek outside his house apparently has such a strong current in the spring thaw that it was eroding the banks and carrying big rocks away; so we had to dam the creek and lay 12 tons of concrete along the creekbed. Having never seen President Packer except in a business suit on television, it was very strange to see him sitting in a golf cart wearing a windbreaker, jeans, and a trucker hat. He had kids and grandkids there helping out, everyone was so nice. And I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but I was amazed at how normal he was... just a nice, clever, wisecracking old man, it seemed.

Indian Hills is a good place. We live on the west side of the mountains, so you feel completely isolated until you come over the top of the hill and suddenly the Denver skyline is right in your face, smog inversion and all. But on our side of the mountain, it is all rich hippies (a contradiction in terms, you'd think, but not here) and androgynous "horse people". But everyone seems pretty cool. Dad says his friend Ruven is the 'de facto mayor'... if that tells you anything about how chill this town is. Who's in charge around here? He is... sort of.

Ruven is cool though. He just turned 80, and they threw a party for him at the log-cabin community center down the hill. Well, it was for him at first, but then it was for all the February birthdays in town... and then January and March too, why not? (These are cool people.) He's from Mexico, by way of Lawrence, Kansas, so it was "feliz cumpleanos" and a pinata for the kids, with "real" Mexican food (as far as I know); and then the coolest thing I've ever seen:

As the party was just starting to wind down, three violinists, two trumpeters, a little guy with a huge acoustic bass guitar, and a really big guy with a little tiny ukelele marched in single-file, in full mariachi regalia, and rocked the house for about an hour. It was pretty much standard-issue country-song lyrics, from what I could understand, but they had incredible voices and it was a surprise mariachi band. How can you top that? Ruven wept openly. I would too, if you surprised me with a mariachi band.

I wish I could say it still feels weird to be home, but it's a lot like my first week in the mission field: I've been doing this forever, and anything that happened more than two weeks ago feels like a dream. The real world is pretty much the way I left it, except somebody ripped off my CDs. But of course I see it all differently. I've been painfully let down by my old favorite bands... it's harder for me to whole-heartedly identify with bitter existentialism and euphemized lust.

But my appreciation for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, for example, was intensified to the point of being a little silly; because I know what it's like to know something really, really important, and be believed only by people who believe everything. I know what it's like to try to help people who hate you and think you're nuts. And I know how good it feels to have a friend or two who can see what you see, to prove to yourself that you really aren't crazy. Maybe that's why we go two-by-two.

Started work yesterday, back at Milliman. In the break room, this young-ish, strange-ish blonde girl says, "Hey, are you new?"

"Yeah, sort of... I'm Kirsten's son."

"Oh... I don't know Kirsten."

"Oh." Awkward pause.

"What's your name?"

"Kevin."

"You look like a Kevin."

"Hope that's a good thing."

"Oh, it is."

"Well, good!"

And I walk out with my can of ginger ale. Innocent enough. A couple hours later, I walk by her half-cubicle on my way to the john, and she says, playfully, "I dreamed about you, Doug."

Startled, I look histrionically over both shoulders, hoping Doug is behind me. No such luck.

"Oh," she says, "I--I thought you were--um--Doug."

I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I just cracked up and walked off. Maybe not in the nicest way. Now I feel bad. But that experience, plus the money, made it a day well spent.

Rip Van Winkle

2008-02-29T11:02:00.008-07:00

I arrived in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, and I've been rediscovering the real world. It's like they froze my body in 2006 & now they're thawing me out to fight the communists, like Captain America. I've used a Blackberry & a Bluetooth earpiece & an iPod Nano for the first time, and it's like watching my grandpa try to check his email. No clue what I am doing. But I'm learning fast.

Funny how things can change with old high school acquaintances, too. You might leave a girl fairly normal, for instance, and you come back and she's a bisexual with a braided mohawk and a tongue ring. For instance. And then some of the wilder blood-drinking Satanists you went to school with now seem to be pretty well-adjusted and happy to see you. It's a little unnerving.

My final interview with President Batchelor was terse and uninformative. Lord bless you, here is your commemorative lapel pin, give me back the credit card. But the testimony meeting was powerful. I fully expected to watch all the Utah elders weep & wonder why I didn't feel so moved; but I got about ten seconds through my testimony & started bawling like a child--and then wondered what everyone else's problem was that they couldn't cry.

I had felt a little flippant about it all that day, it wasn't "real" yet. But when we started the departing slideshow, I realized what a gift it had been to serve in the Arkansas Little Rock Mission, how unique an experience it had been. I had a fresh awareness of the personality of God, and how much He loves to give good gifts. So I pretty much lost my cool as soon as they made me start talking.

The flight home was the longest of my life. I tried to pass the time formulating some idea of what I would do with myself when I got home, but nothing seemed to come except a vague sense of peace, that whatever happened would be all right if I'll just do my best to live the gospel. So I looked out the window the entire flight, and listened to the married black man behind me flirt with the pretty white grad student in the window seat.

Shopping for clothes was amusing... I went in painfully nerdy p-day clothes & glasses, which along with the missionary hairdo was pretty depressing. The skinny blonde girl that worked there handled my attempt to buy classy clothes in the most deliciously patronizing way. Umm... why don't you try the pile of t-shirts with video game characters and little snide phrases on them, that's how you people like to dress, isn't it? So Mom had to help out. (Laugh all you want, my mom knows where it's at.)

Thus equipped with some gentile clothes, we went down to BYU to meet my trainer, the erstwhile Elder (now Sterling) Maughan. You could hardly look up without making eye contact with some beautiful girl, and you'd smile and some would even smile back. I'm sure I will often salivate for college life in the course of the next several months, but it will have to wait. It will be good to have some cool-off time, too, so I don't propose to the first girl who says 'okay' to dinner & a movie.

It's incredible, though, how all these things about which I've been fantasizing for years are suddenly real and in reach. I'm now required to worry about things that I've been forbidden to worry about for two years... college, dating, money, career, etc. Over the past week or so it's become much more strongly apparent that I need to look into a career with CES. I had considered it to be unrealistic, but it's starting to look possible, and everyone has been so supportive that I'd feel like a wimp if I didn't at least check it out.

Grandpa arranged for a visit with an Institute teacher who lives in his ward, Bro. Beckstrom, so I could ask him my questions and get a clearer idea of the job. His first question for me, amusingly, was one that had never occurred to me, and which took me completely by surprise. "So, do you like teenagers?"

I had to laugh at myself. I had given absolutely no thought to the fact that my lectures would have an audience--particularly a teenage audience--and that there might be some challenges associated with that."You know, teaching would be a pretty sweet gig if it weren't for the students, " he says with a laugh.

So, do you like teenagers? My automatic response was, "No," but then I thought better of it and it was, "Hell no"; but then I thought about it some more, and realized that one of the things I loved best about being a missionary was talking to teenagers who thought I was born wearing a necktie, and showing empathy and relating to them. I would be scared to teach a classroom full of bored teenagers, but it would be a thrill, a challenge, and I think I could learn how to do it. That's why you go to school for it. I would never be wealthy, but I don't need to be wealthy, and the perks sound amazing.

It's been an exhilarating week. But I need to get back to Colorado & go on a date. It's way past time for me to get rolling on that.

--Kevin