What do you Mean?

So...

I now live in Athens, GA. Home to the illustrious and storied University of Georgia.

As I am a male and as I am now a student again (full-time, I know - what was I thinking?), I chose to purchase a meal plan. Yeah, I basically had a meal plan before, anyway, sponsored by Wendy's, Del Taco, and Alberto's.

Well, this evening the parking garage adjacent to the dining facility was very busy. It almost seems as if there was an REM concert serviced by said garage that let out concurrent with the end of my tasty chicken caesar wrap.

My Jeep happened to be parked in a stall serviced by the lane that was experiencing the traffic issues. "No problem," I thought, "as soon as the cars behind me see the reverse lights on, it will indicate my desire to leave sometime this millennium, and, in a display of that famous southern hospitality, they will allow me to reverse and join the legions of automobiles trying to escape the clutches of this garage."

As with so many other things in life, I was wrong.


The first car was a Volkswagen piloted by a southern belle who, to her credit, would have had to make a split second recognition of the scenario and then slam on the brakes to allow me to exit the stall. Having sisters age 19 and 17, asking for recognition and cognition (the order of which is counter intuitive in this situation... hmmm) in such a short amount of time is a tall order. She gets a pass.

The second was some Volvo-driving academic type. He had plenty of time to evince the courtesy heretofore mentioned and heretofore expected. He white knuckled his way past my efforts to leave, without any equivocation about his determination to get out of that garage at least one car length ahead of me. Jerk.


The third car was the remarkable one. It was a Nissan Sentra from the late 1980s. I'm sure it looked just like this one 20 years ago:

Well, as the woman in the car approached, I started inching my way backward. She saw me, made eye contact with me, and when the opportune moment for her to do the nice thing came along, she looked away, straight forward, and punched the gas. Yeah. I expected that, based on the previous two cars.

The nice group of college-aged kids in the next car waved me in. Kudos go to the driver.

As I reverse and maneuver my Jeep backward to enter the stream of traffic, I notice a litany of bumper stickers on the back of the Sentra in question. These were the garden variety bumper stickers that you might expect to find at a Dukakis for President rally. As my car turned, one bumper sticker in particular seemed as out of place as Dukakis in that tank.

Exhibit A:

Congratulations, Sentra Lady:

Mean Hypocrites Suck Even Worse.

Talking Points

Really? I'm about to do this?

Yup. Either enjoy or wait until we get into the "Fun With Pictures" blog posts that are forthcoming.

Still, this is worthwhile reading to maybe understand something about where I am coming from, you know, to round out the overall picture of who I am.

This is the text from my most recent talk, “All these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good.”

10 spiritual lessons I have learned from experiences in my physical life:

1. The Lord will shape a path for us. It may not be clear to us in the moment. This is especially true when those moments are moments we would rather not see ourselves in. If we “learn [our] duty, and to act in in the office in which [we are] appointed, in all diligence,” we will see the fruits of our labor as we reflect on it down the road. I have shared this before in testimonies that I have borne, but as I look back on my life, I see the Lord's hand leading and guiding me to where I am now. Experiences that I had a bad attitude about in the moment, thinking, “I wish I were not here right now,” are sometimes those I am the most thankful for now. This is also what leads me to lesson number 2.

2. God loves me. God loves all of us.

3. “The worst they can tell me is 'no'”. I love baseball. There, I said it. When I was younger, I played, just like most other boys my age. I loved baseball, and I was not great at it. I was not a 5 skill player. In fact, I wasn't even a one skill player. During my freshman year of High School, a former teammate of mine asked if I was planning on trying out for the high school team. I told him that after some thought, I decided I would. My rationale was this: If I try out and make the team, I would be ecstatic, if I don't try out for the team, the answer was already “no.” So, I tried out. I was out there, and I was in a league of my own. Not in a good way. But, after the week of tryouts, the coach gathered us together, and said, “well, there are 24 spots on this team, and since there are 24 of you that have stayed for tryouts all week, there will be no cuts, you're all on the team.” I rode the pine for 3 years of High School baseball and loved every minute of it. But, I never would have had that opportunity had I not been willing to face rejection.

4. Nothing of value in life comes easily. A while back, someone asked me what my 3 proudest achievements were. After answering the question, I noticed that all 3 had something in common. These were all things that had required a lot of hard work and time.

5. The importance of family. One December, when I was 10 years old, I developed a pain in my lower right side one day. This pain was so intense that I was not able to sleep that entire night. The next day, my mom took me to the doctor who diagnosed it as appendicitis. After the surgery began, they recognized it as something much more complicated than a routine surgery. They removed the perfectly fine appendix (we might as well get what we were paying for, right?) and rushed me from Richfield to Primary Children's in Salt Lake City. There they removed a shriveled kidney and a ureter bloated by a blockage that had built up. Being in the hospital as a kid around Christmas time is about the best time to be in the hospital. People are already in the consumer mindset, so, I was regaled with gifts from family, many major merchants came through the hospital and gave the children presents – Fred Meyer literally gave me a 5 foot tall stalking chock full of toys. That was awesome. What wasn't awesome, however, was that after 2 surgeries that required literally opening me up, essentially splitting me in half, I was pretty bedridden for the best part of a week. My recovery was going along as planned, but, by December 23rd, I was still only marginally mobile. The reality soon hit me: I may not be able to go to Nana's house for the big Christmas family celebration. This is where we would all get together, 4 generations of family, and spend Christmas eve together. Just imagine 4 generations of people who are all jokesters and storytellers in the same vein as I am. This is seriously good times. That day, the doctor came in, and we asked him if he thought it would be possible to release me in time to spend Christmas eve with my family. He said that I was progressing nicely, but, that he would not release me until I had shown signs that I was healed. He said that if I could walk from my room to the end of the hall and back with no help, he would release me. I was determined in that moment to walk down to the end of the hall and back by the next day. So, I got up and got more active. Moving was a pain. Literally and figuratively. But, at 7 o'clock on December 24th, I walked down that hall, knowing in my mind if I could walk to the end of the hall and back, I would get to spend Christmas Eve with my family. Nothing could have stopped me that day. I wanted nothing more than to be with my family that night at Nana's house. I didn't care about the toys anymore, I didn't care about the pain in my side, all I wanted to do was be there among the people I loved and celebrate Christmas with them. That got me down the hall and back, just in the nick of time. I made it to Nana's, and had a wonderful Christmas that year. This is the promise the Lord gives us, if we can walk down the hall and back, though hard it may be, we will get to return to our families.

6. No matter how many times I fall, the Lord will pick me up and forgive me.

7. Revelation is real. I never knew this until I had the opportunity to exercise the priesthood and lay my hands upon another's head and have my mind filled with concepts that needed to be shared with the person receiving the blessing.

8. The Book of Mormon is true. I have read it. I have studied it in my heart. I have prayed fervently to my Father in Heaven to ask him about the truthfulness of the book. I have followed the promise given to us throughout the scriptures that God will give us the answer if we seek it diligently. I prayed until I had a sincerity of heart and a true desire to know the answer to such a pivotal question in my life. I received that answer. I now know, have known since, and will always know that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be.

9. Man's epistemology is not God's epistemology. In other words, the scientific method will come up short for man when trying to gain a true knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The two paradigms (as the primary source for knowledge) are fundamentally in opposition. The first principle of the scientific method is to base conclusions on observed outcomes. The first principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ is faith. Faith, as Paul and Moroni tell us, are things hoped for and not seen. Using reason to understand spiritual principles is akin to using a hammer to undo a nut from a bolt. This is not to say that the hammer of reason is not a useful tool. However, to undo the mysteries of God, one must use the spiritual wrench of faith. The understanding of this fundamental distinction underlies the reason one will fail at gaining a testimony of celestial principles using any kind of logic, reason, philosophy, or scientific method. Man today would build a tower of babel using the bricks of reason to reach the heavens. This folly is as punctuated as much today as it was thousands of years ago; to climb to great heights, you must hit your knees.

10. There is no happiness like the happiness I feel when living the principles of the gospel. My mind is never as clear as it is when I'm living the principles of the gospel. My patience is never so great as it is when I'm living the principles of the gospel. As Lehi states in the first chapter of 2 Nephi, “And if it so be that they shall keep his commandments they shall be blessed upon the face of this land.”

(Unfinished) Home Box Office

Okay Mormons, it's time for a critical thinking exercise.

Which is more sacred? The temple ceremony or the physical intimacy reserved for marriage?

My facebook and e-mail accounts have been flooded over the past week with cause invitations from people who have chosen to boycott HBO for its upcoming plans to show portions of the LDS temple ceremony.

Rather than stampede through an open discussion of this topic here, I just want to use this forum to engage those of you readers in some critical thinking.

HBO is about to display some of the LDS religion's most sacred rites on premium cable. This is also the network that has delivered to us approximately 784 installments of the show "Real Sex."

This is why I asked the lead off question. Which is more sacred? There are no explicit penalties for sharing the temple ceremony; however, sexual sin makes it into the top 3, behind murder and the unpardonable sin.

I don't know the answer to the question that logically follows, but it should be asked: Is it worse to show a reproduction of the rites included in the temple, or to show sexually explicit material?

Even if they are on the same plane, or in the same neighborhood, why haven't people boycotted HBO on the grounds of the latter?

This is not a soapbox I'm trying to climb onto, but the conversation highlights how our sensitivities as a culture have developed and are currently manifest.

Interestingly correlated to this, is this dandy piece of information that my mother sent to me last week. Yeah, Sevier in Sevier County, Utah is number one. Richfield is the county seat of Sevier; Richfield will always be what I consider home.

Bump it up, Kris (I'm about to)

Let's face it, I care way too much about some ridiculous things.

That's the only disclaimer I will give to the information that follows.

An interesting phenomenon occurred in the 5 years that I was outside the Beehive State: Apparently an updated hairdo based on the state's nickname was created. I have called this the "Utah Bump." This is the younger cousin to the "Utah Claw" bangs.

Here are some photo examples of what this Utah Bump looks like:

This is the Utah Helmet subspecies of the Utah Bump. This is especially useful for protecting the heads of BYU co-eds after falling from their high horses. (Note the several trophy wedding announcements on the fridge)

This chick is apparently an award winning hair stylist... from Ogden. Notice how it looks like the back of her head is either floating away, her hair is being pushed up by the gang of rodents living on the back of her head, or she is a robot with the service panel being left wide open after getting that over anxious smile and big empty look in her eyes.





















Amy Winehouse before her recent concert at the E-Center in West Valley. She said that she wished she could get her hair higher, but her brittle frame wouldn't support the weight of that much hair product. She did another line of coke to take the pressure off, hoping that she wouldn't be judged too much, stating she "just wanted to fit in."





















I saw this young woman (or someone who looked a lot like her) leaving a scrapbooking store in the Provo Towne Center recently.

Who do I blame for all this bad hair? Well, it's hard to pin it down to just one set of people. For instance, one could hold culpable the masses of women who find it their responsibility to deem every hairstyle "cute" no matter how egregious the hair crime. Apparently the premise behind this is that all women have fragile self esteems, and therefore you do not want to topple their delicately arranged tower of crystal wine glasses by telling them they have a bad haircut. What then happens is that these women actually start to believe this and then perpetuate the madness.

This is exacerbated by the legions of Mormon girls in Utah who decide that they want to go to collage and become cosmotologists so that they can give out plenty of haircutes to all their release society sisters. These poor girls are so out of touch with reality that they cannot be trusted for an honest evaluation of a person's hair style. Notice I am not referring to bona fide stylists, rather the dime-a-dozen, ambition-lacking, purple-spikey-haired legions relegated to servicing the walk-in crowd at Dollar Cuts.

Now the phenomenon seems to be dying out, for which I am happy. However, like all bad things, it probably won't ever die. The fact that this is a fashion that has passed the way past its pirme point was confirmed to me while my sister and I were watching TV over the Christmas holiday. I have added the commercial for your consumption:


After seeing this commercial, my sister and I started a game where we would spot potential Bumpit users. Being that we were shopping in Utah County and at such highbrow stores as TJMaxx and Ross, you can only imagine how many in this product's market demographic we were able to spot. You might also be able to guess what my sister is going to get for her next birthday.

Perhaps it's too early to recognize this hair style as a regrettable one (such as the Utah Claw in its heyday), but, it was difficult to find very many images on the internet of such hair. I think I might start a contest for the best example of the Utah Bump you can find and post. I might even throw in a set of Bumpits as a prize to the winner. Done and done. The contest is on!