My Name Is Thresher

I really should make a list of all the silly things I want to achieve in life, and then I could cross them off with unabandon pride.

As I go about my online life I try to add helpful comments where I can, using that BYU supplied social science degree to make the world a better, happier place. Sometimes it pays off and I don't even know it. I recently shared a touching missionary experience I had back in Coventry, all about the power of personal testimony. So spiritual in fact a Church owned publishing company used it in their newspaper. That's right, I was quoted in Mormon Times, the new supplement that comes with the Church News.

Here is the whole article online. And here is the quote from about 2/3rd's the way down.

Quotable comment: "Testimony of a 5 year old on my mission. I know the Book f Mormon is Blue, and Joseph Smith is a man. Still works." -- TStevens,commenting on "Mormon rhetoric: the social uses of meaningless words."

In terms of Mormoniness, I totally rock as a Church published author now; up there with the GA's. Everyone must Bow Down before my greatness now when I make comments in Sunday School, because I am the man! The big call will becoming any day now - I feel it.

And Steve - autographs only AFTER Sacrament - NOT during.

Shorts

Helping Cenny with her spelling words: SEQUENCE
Me: That is when something is in a special or particular order, like 1, 2, 3, etc,
Somebody Else: Or like the shiny things you sew on clothes.

Flatulence expert defines 'normal' output rate
That was the headline for a Canadian TV story. Open apology to my sons, I didn't realize that you could make a career out of it.

Why do church leaders constantly have to over sell meetings. We have Stake Conference tonight and they have been billing it for weeks as the most HISTORIC CONFERENCE LIKE EVER!!!! It is the religious equivalent of a tractor pull add on the radio. Unless we are cutting down to two hours or getting tithing discounts for having more than four kids, it probably isn't historic. All it does is undermine your credibility. Outside guess is they are cutting off one of the outside wards for another stake, but that isn't really historic. (Un)fortunately, due to Lisa cutting out I have all the kids and will not be attending.



Of course this place will be one of the highlights of our Iceland vacation in June. Read the article to get more background.

And finally, we have this article where a judge ruled that pole dancing is in fact art, and thus qualifies for a tax exemption. How did he do it? Through hours of watching DVD's of pole dancing. I bet the judge had a hard time (HA!) making that decision - "I need more footage (HA HA!!) of the dancers." But the best part is this quote from the lawyer for the Nite Moves dance club and Utah ACLU member (HA H - well you get it, the puns write themselves here) wherein he compares Erotic Dancing with LDS Temples. Here is the quote:
Nite Moves' lawyer, Andrew McCullough, is a Mormon and a board member of the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He told the New York Law Journal he sees similarities between objections to strip clubs and new Mormon temples.
“They say, 'It's lights, it's traffic, it's noise,' ” he said. “But what they really mean is, 'We don't like your kind.' ”


Awesome, just awesome.

Please Note - Shorts are just that, short little happenings or news items too short for their own post.

Two out of three

Corner Shop
by Roopa Farooki

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.

George Bernard Shaw

Corner Shop details the the dreams of three generations of a multi-racial family in London. The above maxim proves to be true as we see two very unhappy individuals at the end. One who achieves it all yet achieves nothing, with the other does nothing they want, but has everything. The third player tries to do avoid anything after tragedy strikes and yet ends up happy.

I like this book but come away with an empty feeling, as if the book could have had more substance. There is more to this story that wasn't told, maybe constrained by trying to tell three stories instead of focusing on just one.

2 out of 3? When I am scanning for new fiction I have never heard of I am usually looking for three things - Female, Foreign, and Funny. The first two because I most of what I read is from male American authors, and the last because I like funny.

Well, she finally did it

That's right, Lisa has left me. The real surprise is she was true to her threats all these years; she has stuck me with the kids. I thought for sure she would take at least one of them.

Too bad we didn't have one of these last week

We could have solved all of Zeke's problems

It Was Short

Splitting Heirs
by Rick Hanson

The plot was tenuous, the writing okay, the humour had its moments, but overall the best thing was the length. Based on that alone, I will read another one in the series hoping it will be better on the other characteristics.
Splitting heirs stars ex-Vietnam vet, ex-policeman, part-time sculptor, amateur detective Adam McCleet, his dedicated and sophisticate girlfriend, and obnoxious sister. Allegedly he did a good deed for a recently deceased millionaire, and according to the will he gets 2.1 million dollars along with the other 7 inheritors. All he has to do is prove that someone in the room (at the will reading) is a murderer by the time they meet again in a month. And so on and so forth. Like I said the plot is really stretched, but maybe if I had wrote 4 books already m writing would be to. So like I said I will visit and earlier work in the series and see if it is any better.

We have learned the secret

Salt Lake City Temple

Here is what we usually do. In the weeks following General Conference we will gather the kids around the computer and watch a speaker or two through online video. Typically we battle with them to pay any attention at all and then spend almost as long as the talk was trying to retell it to them to insure they get something out of it. Anotherwords, they don't want to sit and listen to some old guy rambling on, and they get nothing from it.

Choir in old Tabernacle

Today when the kids got home from school they started begging Lisa if we could watch some more conference today - especially our youngest two (JT and Cenny). They were quite upset when we said we couldn't today because Lisa and I began our Dave Ramsey Financial Peace classes. How did we achieve such rapid turn-around with the kids - and it only took 30 seconds??

Well on Monday I was reviewing the commentary about conference on the blog By Common Consent when I saw comment 134 by Rob on the Saturday Afternoon thread. It said:

So, to keep our children engaged, my wife is picking one word for each session. As we watch the session, if the key word is spoken, there is a bowl of candy and each person can get a piece of candy. For this session, the word is Temple. My 14 year old daughter complained at the start of the session that they wouldn’t use that word enough. We’ve each had the opportunity to partake from the bowl 7 times this session — 5 during the statistical report, and 2 during Elder Pino’s talk.

So we opened a bag of Sweet Tart Jelly Beans and told the kids the word was "Faith." They all sat riveted to Elder Hales talk and upon review they all could tell me exactly what it was about. I think we got the jelly beans three times. Our kids are now conference fiends!

And once again another opening in the big chairs and I was yet again passed over - for this yahoo.

Elder Neil Andersen

Crazy, I know.