Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

Halloween Party My parents' place 7:00 pm- ? Saturday Costumes welcome. Sorry that it's lame, but I haven't really been able to make the cool invites that I'd like because the date didn't get scheduled for far too long. Hope you can come. If you can't, call and be there in spirit!

So in direct contradiction of beginning-of-school daily goal number 1, I find that I am least effective as an academic producer between the hours of two and four or five (the infamous after-school) hours). So I've been fudging a little (c'mon, I have two night classes--two!) and watching Monday afternoon movies. A'right, yeah. I've been blown away by every movie Netflix has sent me of late. I'm trying to catch up on the movies I missed on my mission. First I saw The Prestige and let me illustrate: This is my mind: _ _ _ _ _ _ This is my mind after watching The Prestige: *!&^*#!! Not that I'm full of expletives, but that sucka blew my mind! I spent the next couple of days just thinking (A) I will never find myself in a distructive competitive trap that will destroy both my competition and myself and (B) how did they do that? Very high "whoa" factor. Then I thought watching The Queen would be nice and sedate. Nope. Whoa again, my friends, whoa again...

I'm sure Sarah Palin is qualified in ways that I am not aware of, but as a rhetor, she makes George Bush seem eloquent. Old school.

Ah... another Conference weekend come and gone. This is our only truly unique religious holiday ( hmm , the 24 th of July may come close) and it actually requires some sort of effort instead of a day off. Even Sunday we net an hour of "church" (but if you discount meetings for callings, one probably comes off better than expected). Mostly this holiday comes in terms of reunion. My old visiting teachee from last year, who had her life plans change suddenly, stopped in during Girls' Night (and what a weird construct that is; we live in all-girls housing, so how are the two hours of Priesthood session any different than any other night? What, in other words, makes this night different from all other nights?); us roommates went to our respective homes, except the one from California, who spent the weekend with her old roommates; I invited my current visiting teachee to my parents' house because "she didn't have anywhere to go for Conference." It's a g...

D'y'know what I was only just thinking about? Charity and identification. Is it possible that through identification we have that Machiavellian justification for "loving [one's] neighbor as [one's] self?" This especially is the case in terms of that "outside perspective" that we talking about in Brian's class the other day; by identifying with some group, their success becomes your success in the eyes of the outside perspective. For example, if I'm thinking of myself primarily as Mormon (or, say, Catholic) I can justify voting for Mitt Romney (or JFK) exclusively because he's Mormon (Catholic). As the outsiders see Mitt as a successful and/or powerful and/or intelligent individual, the introductions to me as the Mormon become less derogatory. This is probably why all Mormons have "The List" of successful Mormons (Did you know that the Used are Mormon? Did you know Aaron Eckhart went to BYU ?) to whip out to convince themselve...

Semenza, of course, freaks me out. If you have no idea who this man is, let me explain: Semenza has written a book about graduate studies that demands that you: -take no more days off than either Christmas /or/ Yom Kippor. That's it. -read 100 articles a week for each seminar -publish 30-page articles every semester -never see your family if possible. If this is impossible, make them visit you in the library. Between page-turning. -create several folios and vitaes if you don't want to end up homeless, addicted and, eventually, murdered in cold blood. Hurrah for academia!

With all that talk about with how intimately involved God is in our lives, it is increasingly striking to me all of the things that God doesn't care about. They are myriad. We even had a family home evening about it and ran out of space for everything on our cardstock. As Cecil O. said "some things such as meekness, humility duty, solid scholarship [this is a talk to BYU], and responsiveness to duly constituted priesthood authority are vitally important not only to self but to the kingdom. Other things like golf, bicycles, how specifically one earns a living, what one's major is, or what color blouse or tie to wear are of significant personal interest but of no permanent or transcendent value in the greater scheme of life" ("The Importance of Meekness in the Disciple-Scholar"). Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Some of my favorite inspirational moments have been when God says, "M. it doesn't matter. At all. Sheesh." (Some people have...