Living in a Book

One of the blurbs on the back of Stephenie Meyer's book The Chemist says in part that "People do not want to just read Meyer's books; they want to climb inside them and live there."

Well, I for one would not enjoy that at all. First she gave us the Twilight books. Vampires, shape-shifters, and werewolves. All of them get their lives pretty disrupted. Okay, maybe life as one of the background characters would be alright, but I don't see how their lives would be any better than my own.

Then we've got the post-apocalyptic world in The Host. I have yet to find any post-apocalyptic world more appealing than my current reality.

And next comes The Chemist. The characters in this book have a kill-or-be-killed existence for the majority of the story, with a touch of living in hiding, constantly looking over their shoulders. Still not something I'd choose.

If I did have to climb inside a book and live there, I think I'd have to go with a straight romance genre. Their misfortunes tend to be along the lines of lost jobs, minor accidents, and miscommunication. I'm not really eager to experience such things, but at least I'm not highly likely to die from them. Plus, I have a pretty good chance of finding true love in the bargain.

Marsa Joyoy

A member of one of my facebook groups recently posted a meme thing that has been going the rounds in her circles, saying that you have recently given birth to a daughter and her name must be the first three letters of your mother's name plus the last two letters of your own name.

So, announcement: I am now the mother of a baby girl named Marsa.

Marsa fit in pretty well with the names the other ladies in the group got. But then I tried out the same formula with my sisters' names. And what did they get? Maria. Marte. Maryn.

Every single one of those is a real, reasonably normal name. Unfair!

I was able to console myself with the results I got when I gender-flipped it and used my dad's and brothers' names: Ranam and Ranll. At least Marsa has a decent vowel/consonant distribution.

After that, I played around a bit with other family names. When I was born, I guess I really should have been named Loule or Dorle. And Dad was supposed to have been Othnd. (The men in my family aren't doing too well with name pronouncability, are they?)

My favorite is probably what came up when I moved on to middle names: Joyoy.

Maybe I will name my daughter using this method. After all, who would want to be called Martha Joy or Margaret Joy or Miriam Joy if they could be known as Marsa Joyoy?

Seems Reasonable

After learning of the recentish assertion that Mormons don't live in the real world, it occurred to me that if we live in a fake world, doesn't it make sense that we would worship a different, fake Jesus?

External Consistency

I recently followed a link to a tarot card site and got some free readings. The general, love, and career ones, meant to answer specific questions I thought of while selecting the cards, were not particularly illuminating. Then I went to another love one which was supposed to predict romantic compatibility based on birthdates. So I entered my birthdate and chose a date for the guy, then it used those dates to assign us cards. I was Chariot; he was Strength. And this is how the analysis ended: "Both are independent spirits but Strength likes to occasionally imagine there is such a thing as soul mate and love of a lifetime. Chariot is far too sensible for that nonsense and inevitably Strength can feel Chariot is simply too cool a cucumber to meet the requirements for passion."

The first thought that struck me upon reading this was, "Since when am I too sensible to imagine a love of a lifetime?" I actually posted some of my not-entirely-against thoughts on the matter here.

Then I remembered that I am a Scorpio. The attributes associated with Scorpios that I always remember are passion and mystery. So, if the date of my birth makes me a passionate Scorpio, how can it also make me "too cool a cucumber to meet the requirements for passion"? I thought that maybe my mysteriousness hides my passionate depths, but then that is basically saying that Mr. Strength writes me off before bothering to really look for the capacity for passion. And that does not seem right at all.

Is it really too much to ask that two completely unrelated divination systems fit together logically?

Less Inspiring Scripture

Scriptures that nobody shares as the Spiritual Thought before a lesson:

Ether 10:3
And his eldest son, whose name was Shez, did rebel against him; nevertheless, Shez was smitten by the hand of a robber, because of his exceeding riches, which brought peace again unto his father.

Ether 14:1
And now there began to be a great curse upon all the land because of the iniquity of the people, in which, if a man should lay his tool or his sword upon his shelf, or upon the place whither he would keep it, behold, upon the morrow, he could not find it, so great was the curse upon the land.

Scientifically Rigorous Faith

When you read through Church lesson manuals, like the ones for Primary or Family Home Evening, it isn't unusual to come across a sentence saying something like, "Share a time when your life was blessed through obedience to the principle of ________."

Well, I've always had a hard time singling out exact cause and effect for my blessings. Even during my most dramatically difficult or tempting times, no blessing has ever jumped out at me as coming because I obeyed that specific commandment that had given me trouble. If I paid my tithing and then found some money I forgot I had, I didn't make any connection between the two things.

So maybe I should take careful note of all the blessings in my life, then stop obeying various commands one at a time. That way, I can see what I stop being blessed with and what comes back when I resume my obedience. It's the most scientifically rigorous study of the issue I can think of at this point.

Great Literature

I was just at my sister's blog and reread some stories we wrote together with our other sisters last summer. The rules were you write one sentence, fold the paper over so only your sentence is showing, and pass to the next person. The story ends when you get to the bottom of the page. I will repost the stories here, so you can see what great works of literature the world will get to see if I ever actually get published.

On Lydia's blog, she bolded the lines she wrote. I will follow her example and bold my lines.


One day, a little girl found a unicorn in her tree house. She was very excited, for she had always dreamed of meeting one of those magical creatures. Unfortunately, it was not as magical as she had dreamed the meeting would be. She had always imagined unicorns and rainbows when she met him, but was very disappointed when the unicorns were unaccompanied by rainbows. :[ But when the unicorn offered her a ride she got over the absence of rainbows.

"Yea!" she cried, for she had never imagined she would get to ride one! Unfortunately she fell off and fell into a coma. Sobbing, he brought her comatose body to Bart the out of body guy and asked him to communicate with her. Bart went out of body to communicate with her and discovered that she sometimes talked to Jill, or whatever the coma girl Neal's girlfriend's name was. He realized that he could ask her what the coma-girl's name was.
Surprised to be asked such a question, the nurse grabbed the wrong file and incorrectly informed him that her name was John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. "AAAAAAAAAA" screamed John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, and she wept and wailed and gnashed her teeth.
Bart was out-of-bodying and happened to think of her, turned up, then turned visible and asked her what was going on, how could he help her, and would she like some fries with that?

"Why, of course," she said happily, "but make sure to include fry sauce!" Being from California, he did not know what fry sauce was and gave her a confused look, but she thought it was a dirty look.

"I hate you Bart, you give me dirty looks! And you hate fry sauce!" screamed John Jacob Jingleheimer Schimdt and she threw a bedpan at him.
"Well, at least I don't give you dirty bedpans," Bart said, and left without helping him, irritated at the lack of gratitude and respect.

The person Bart was talking to went out and talked to him, saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you would get so mad."

Notes: There were a couple interesting coincidences here. At least, we found them interesting. First, Jeanette had no idea that the story was about a unicorn, but brought one in anyway. And Lydia had no idea that we were talking about Bart (a character from a book we have at home) when she mentioned him being from California- but that really is where Bart is from.

Rudy, a one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eater, decided to go grocery shopping one raining Tuesday evening. Sadly, it was quite the ordeal to get ready because one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eaters are allergic to water; it makes them melt. In order to prevent his melting, they built a pavilion with walkways stretching everywhere he might need to walk, and instructed him to keep an umbrella with him at all times. However, he had somehow forgotten what an umbrella was. To save face, he pretended to know what it was, which only led to embarrassment. His face flushed a dark shade of violet, and he ran away sobbing, wishing he knew what it was. A girl purple people eater saw him, admired the deep shade of violet he now had, and tried to cheer him up by asking him on a date.

"Well," he said slowly, "I do like to be with people so I will go on a date."
"Alas, I am a one-eyed-one-horned-flying-purple-people-eater and am prone to get hungry and eat you since my grocery shopping has been interrupted- by you," he continued.

So Rudy took a chomp out of their leg, but didn't realize there was an eating people alarm that dumped a bucket of water on him! He started to melt into a pool of liquid sugar, like honey or maple syrup. But actually it was like the treacle in Hagrid's treacle tart. They spit it out, and starving nearly to delirium, Rudy lunged at her. She ran away and threw her shoe at him because it was purple and she though it matched his skin tone. It didn't match, so he threw it back in her general direction and went to the shoe store to find some that would. He found the perfect shoes, then decided to get perfect socks, too. Unfortunately, his idea of perfect was disastrously different than hers. So it wasn't perfect and she ate him.

Notes: It is a slight miracle that this story ended up sticking with the character of Rudy the purple-people-eater the whole time. There were times when somebody wrote not knowing who they were talking about, and then in the next sentence someone either picked up on an unintentional cue that it was a purple-people-eater or else randomly threw him in there.

Once upon a time there was a couple having an intimate moment. They enjoyed the moment so much that they decided to get married. Soon they went home and the female went to the mall to buy a dress. The dress she bought was bright pink with orange polka-spots; she thought it was ravishing, but in reality it was horrendous. He was planning on wearing his daddy's tuxedo which was a little big, with the cuffs hanging around his ankles, with a ravishing/horrendous tie to match her dress. Unfortunately, he had donated that tux to DI last year. He sighed and went to the mall, where he saw the girl. Suddenly, he realized he was madly in love with her. Excitedly, he blurted it out, thus starting the intimate moment. The woman was displeased with his interruption.

"Well," he said, "I needed to get a new set of clothing."

"If you needed a new set of clothing," she retorted huffily, "you could have at least gotten something that matched my new, ravishing pink with orange polka-spots dress!"

Angrily he huffed back, "I did! See this ravishing slash horrendous tie??"
"It is not at all horrendous, and I don't believe you," she said, crossing her arms and jutting out her chin.

He stammered, attempting to explain, when a thief ran into the store. He suddenly realized that he was now madly in love with the robber and hated the girl with all his being. Thus, the intimate moment was over and he declared his newfound passion to the thief.

So the man and the thief got engaged and the woman went off to build a lucrative career. And the thief said, "I am very happy I met you, mister, because I thought I would be forever single."

Then he realized that his previous feelings were just indigestion, told her she would be forever single, turned her in to the police, found the girl, kissed her, apologized, and they eloped and lived happily ever after.

Notes: Jeanette thought we went into an extended flashback and I misread the sentence preceding my third sentence as saying the moment was startled, not started. Also, notice that the thief never actually steals anything or even attempts to steal anything. We just magically know that she is a thief.

Also, don't worry, when I really write a book I will make it a point to know what happened two sentences previously.