Apprehension, wealth, and number two

I often want to blog about religion, but I'm apprehensive. It feels inappropriate to discuss the scriptures and my testimony on the same site where I talk about poop. (Maybe I should just stop blogging about poop. Yes, these links are all unique posts concerning poop.) I've thought of starting yet another blog devoted solely to religious topics, but religious experiences are meant to be shared. And I'm lucky enough to have people that actually read this blog. I have mentioned church before, but there have been many moments where I've wanted to share an insight or an experience, and have held back. How do all of you other bloggers feel about this? Does any body else share similar reservations about publicly blogging about their testimonies? I think community is a vital element of testimony (I'll expound on that in another post), so I'm going to try and overcome my apprehensions and post more often about religion.

(Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this knows me in real life, here's some brief background. I was born and raised in the LDS church. I went to BYU. Since college, I've been sporadically active and am trying to change that "sporadically" to "regularly." Regardless of my activity level, I've always lived a Mormon lifestyle and have a very strong testimony of the church.)

I'm going to start out slow. I LOVE Mormon blogs. My absolute favorite is Feminist Mormon Housewives (site not working currently, see here for now), though By Common Consent is a close second. Earlier today, I was reading a book review on Times and Seasons. It reminded me of several other excellent posts I have read on various bloggernacle sites about wealth and prosperity. For a couple of highlights, see here, here, and here (especially Amri's comment 17).

Each of those posts resonated strongly with me. Not because I think I'm wealthy (though I know compared to the rest of the world, I really am), but because I see a lot of wealth in my family. My family is very conservatively Mormon. They are very generous with sharing their wealth. But they subscribe to the idea that wealth is a result of righteousness and hard work. I think hard work often (but not always) relates wealth, but I firmly believe that wealth is largely obtained through luck. There are plenty of evil lazy rich people and even more good hard-working poor people. Prosperity (as defined in terms of dollars and assets) comes from being dealt a really good hand and knowing how to play it. I don't like conflating it with religion and righteousness.

I remember a family vacation, at my uncle's lake house. I was sitting with my dad in the upstairs living room, overlooking the lake that was just outside the back door. My dad asked me if I ever look at all this and wonder why I wasn't born into this family. Why I had the bad luck to be sent to my dad instead of his more prosperous younger brother. My dad was acknowledging the luck aspect of wealth, but still assigning it more importance than I think it deserves.

Whether I like it or not, ideas of wealth and prosperity are heavily infused into our religious culture. It's an interesting and often emotionally-charged discussion. Is wealth good or bad, or is it more complicated than that? For those of us lucky enough to be wealthy (and really, all Americans should be considered wealthy), what are righteous uses of that wealth? How much of that wealth should we be sharing? Where do we draw that line between want and need? While I'm not exactly sure how I feel about any of it, but it is definitely a discussion worth having.

I know that's kind of a cop-out ending. But if I felt like I had to have draw persuasive mind-blowing conclusions every post, I'd never talk about anything but poop. And thus ends this installment in Jamie Tries to Talk About More Religion. (This doesn't mean I'm going to stop posting about silly things. In fact, look for another one of those obnoxious Survivor posts coming soon.)

WoW noob

Seeing as most people I know play and love this game, I thought I'd try out the 10-day free trial. Here are my observations from my first (and probably last) two hours of playing World of Warcraft:

• By far, the hardest part of the game is coming up with character names.
• All fantasy creatures (wolves, cougars, wild pigs, etc) carry on them a pair of tattered pants.
• I was able to trade 50+ items of tattered clothing for 400 bullets and 400 arrows. Score!
• Oh wait. I can't just throw arrows and bullets. And the store merchant won't buy them back. So these things are even more worthless than my 25 pairs of tattered pants. Fail.
• Playing as an "evil" cow shaman is WAY more fun than playing as a "good" human warrior.
• Upon first entering the human world, I see a human male something pounding THE HELL out of a tree with a wooden mallet.
• Upon first entering the cow world, I see several large male cows spinning furiously in circles.
• I decide to stop laughing at them when I walk into a torch and accidentally catch myself on fire.
• My human warrior man was much more patient than me. After being stabbed several times by some troll, he still doesn't have enough rage for a decent hit. When I just step on a belt buckle, I am brimming with rage. I can't imagine how full of rage I'd be if I was attacked by an ugly troll carrying two extra pairs of tattered pants.
  
• Cows and humans can't walk through walls, torches, or rocks. Though not from lack of trying!
• Though it is more convenient, walking backwards out of a room instead of turning around is a bit embarrassing.
• Though it promises to increase your health, sitting on the ground and eating a piece of bread in the middle of a battle is not a good idea.
• Are higher level players able to talk at me, through my speakers? Or was that the drugs kicking in? I passed a player-cow by a bridge (green text and everything), and she asked me, audibly, out loud, to help her find her dog. I stared at her for a while then ran away.
• The chat feature is not at all intuitive, and I'm much too impatient to read an instruction manual. So if you approached a shaman cow last night, and she stared at you for several awkward moments, and then ran away, I'M SORRY. I COULDN'T FIGURE OUT THE STUPID CHAT.
• So it turns out, when I'm a magic evil cow in a social situation with other magic evil cows, I act the exact same as I do in real life!

Before and after

Alternate title: Woo! New haircut!

before

AFTER

New haircut, hair color, AND glasses.

One of the most hilarious tv moments ever

Alternate title: This will probably not be nearly as funny out of context but OH WELL.

The show:
Community. You should really watch that show. I haven't proselyted a show this fervently since Arrested Development, and weren't you all glad when you finally gave in and watched then?

The characters:
Jeff - snarky used-to-be lawyer with a giant ego
Britta - aimless, usually mature, 28-year-old
Annie - high-strung, over-achieving 18-year-old
Troy - 18-year-old used to be high school football star
Abed - somewhat awkward pop-culture junky
Shirley - middle-aged recent divorcee with thinly-veiled rage issues
Pierce - tactless older man who desperately wants peer approval

From left to right: Abed, Senor Chang, Shirley, Troy, Britta, Jeff, Pierce, and Annie

The set-up:
Annie started dating Vaughn, Britta's ex-boyfriend and a "gateway douche bag." In order to save her from him, Jeff and Britta tried to get Troy to start dating Annie. All of these people are in the same study group. All of this scheming has just come to light, during a study group session.

Jeff: Annie. We’re sorry. We were worried about your well being.

Britta: I guess we feel like we’re sort of all a family and Jeff and I are like your Greendale parents.

Annie: You’re not my mom, Britta. She would never wear boots that go up that high. And what about respecting me as an adult and as a friend.

Britta: Oh. You want to be treated as an adult and a friend? Try not dating your friend’s ex-boyfriend, find your own man.

Annie: But you don’t like Vaughn.

Britta: No I don’t. But I also don’t like seeing him with anyone else. Ta da!

Annie: I asked you if you cared and you said no.

Britta: Fine. I cared. I’m a girlie girl. I like boys and I don’t like it when they’re mean to me and I don’t like when they stop kissing me and start kissing my friends. I’m not that cool. I’m not Juno, okay homeslice?

Jeff: This is what it was about for you? You were jealous?

Britta: Oh please you can’t tell me that you weren’t jealous that Vaughn had his hippie hands all over your debate slash make-out partner.

Annie: What are you insinuating? I took that kiss for the team.

Jeff: What?! [pause] Yeah, that kiss wasn’t for pleasure. It was strategic and joyless.

Annie: What?! [pause] Yeah.

Troy: You did get weirdly specific when you were describing Annie’s body.

Jeff: More specific than the stuff you told me about Britta?

Annie and Britta: What?!

Shirley: Does anyone get specific about me?

Pierce: Check your e-mail.

Shirley: I mark you as spam.

Pierce: Who the hell is Pam?

Abed: When you guys first came in we were as wholesome and healthy as the family in "The Brady Bunch." And now we’re as dysfunctional and incestuous as the cast of "The Brady Bunch."

Shirley: I agree with Abed. This is getting creepy.

Annie: No more creepy than when Jeff wears tight jeans and you say "I’d like to slap those buns on the grill."

Jeff and Pierce: What?!

Shirley: First of all I don’t talk like that and second of all where I’m from it’s perfectly normal for women to talk about their male friends’ backsides. And you don’t see me saying anything crazy about Abed and Troy’s weird little relationship.

Abed and Troy: They’re just jealous.

Jeff: Alright, alright, maybe we’re not a family. Maybe it’s more complicated. Because, unlike a real family, there’s nothing to stop any one of us from looking at any of the others as a sexual prospect.

One of the best tv moments EVER: At this point all characters look around the table and consider all possible romantic pairings, or "ships" as we tv junkies call them. It is just several moments of silent looking, but it is one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen. I can't wait to buy this show on dvd and start forcing more people to watch it.

Me as a cartoon character

Alternate title: I miss photoshop. :(

Meet the Cartoon Jamies:

This Jamie can control your thoughts, dreams, and entire perception of reality with her grossly over-sized forehead.

This Jamie is an antler-horned green goddess of nature who shape-shifts at will from human to tree to wapiti.

This Jamie is an ambiguously gendered sociopath who recently escaped from the secret lab of an evil pharmaceutical corporation. S/he suffers from constant, uncontrollable explosions of adverse side effects.

This Jamie is a typical cubicle drone by day, ruthless robot assassin by night. Her super human strength relies on regular inhaled doses of helium. The higher her voice pitch, the deadlier her fists.

This Jamie is the sassy mother figure that keeps the big-headed, deer-horned, drug-addled, and squeaky robot freaks working together on the side of justice. She's in an on-again/off-again relationship with Batman and always looking snazzy in her off-white pullover turtleneck.

Search Overload

Alternate title: It's time for another very important rant.

Have you ever seen a Bing commercial?



Well now you have. Have you ever seen a website with Bing-powered hot links?

It's kind of hard to see what's going on there, but some websites have hot linked words throughout their text. These display this super obnoxious bing window on roll over. Not after clicking the word, just accidentally rolling over it with your mouse. Now these bing windows are annoying enough, but what puts it into rant territory is their exact similarity to what the commercials are making fun of. You are reading a block of text and suddenly, one word triggers a total freak-out of search results only tangentially related to what you are actually reading. So the bing commercials are inadvertently demonstrating the experience of reading a bing-linked web page. And I agree with them. IT'S OBNOXIOUS.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Note:
There are spoilers in this post. It is less of a review and more a movie summary with some discussion. But don't worry! You can be told the entire plot of this movie and still not know what on earth is going on when/if you finally watch it for yourself. If you did see the movie (or just read the summary), feel free to comment. This movie was very unusual, and I wouldn't be surprised if I misunderstood the entire thing.

Summary:
The movie starts out 3 days before Dr. Parnassus's daughter, Valentina, turns 16. Dr. Parnassus is hundreds of years old. He "won" immortality from the Devil by promising him any offspring he fathered once they turned 16. Valentina doesn't know this, and Parnassus spends the first part of the movie in a drunken emo stupor over this sad fact. Guyliner and everything. The Devil decides to make another wager with Parnassus, to give him one more chance to keep his daughter. The first person to win five souls by the time Valentina turns 16 (by now it's only two days away), gets to keep Valentina.

My life sucks. :(

To win a soul, a person has to go inside the Imaginarium, and make the right choice. The Imaginarium gets "turned on" when Dr. Parnassus goes into a trance. The person walks through a broken mirror, and they are transported inside their own imagination. Eventually, they will come to a decision. One guy has to chose to either climb a giant mountain, or have drink in a pub. Another woman must chose between spending time in a motel room with Johnny Depp, or floating down a river to be awesome and dead like Princess Di. Four other guys have to chose between joining a violence-loving, cross-dressing police force or running home to mommy. It's weird. I don't quite get what it's supposed to be, but it seems like both decisions are based off of the same desire. One is just the easy way to get it, and the other is the hard way. It doesn't quite make sense, but one choice means Dr. Parnassus has won, and the other means the Devil has won. In the choices above, the "Dr. Parnassus" choice was climb the mountain, float down the river of death, and join the cross-dressing police force. If you choose the Devil's option, you explode inside the Imaginarium, and are presumably dead. If you chose the Dr. Parnassus choice, you get to come out of the Imaginarium on a leafy swing, feeling pure bliss, having been "reborn."

Choose the river of death or get blown up!

So right before the devil makes this new bet, the Dr. Parnassus crew (Valentina, a midget, and some other guy named Anton) "rescues" a guy named Tony - Heath Ledger's character. They find him hanging from a bridge. He claims to not know who he is, but he's lying. He tags along to help them get five more souls, though I'm not sure why. He says it's to repay them for saving his life, but I think he was just using them to hide out. He charms some women into the Imaginarium, and goes in with them to help them make the right "Dr. Parnassus" choice. He eventually gets recognized by the people that tried to kill him in the first place, and runs into the Imaginarium to hide. Inside his own imagination, he's amazed by what seems possible in there. He loses the four guys chasing him (they all run home to mommy and get blown up), but has to leave before he gets to make his choice.

Step inside. I swear I won't kill you.

It's finally Valentina's birthday. The Devil and Parnassus have each won four people when Valentina finally learns what's going on. She runs away in anger. Meanwhile, Tony offers to go into the Imaginarium to be the fifth soul Parnassus needs to win the bet. As he's about to go inside, Valentina returns, very very angry. Tony convinces her to go into his imagination with him, saying they can run away and just live there forever. She agrees, despite Anton's protests that Tony is a liar. (Oh yeah, Anton found a piece of newspaper that explained who Tony really was: the chairman of a charity that was selling orphans or something. I'm not exactly sure, I thought I heard "organs," but Jill insists he said "orphans." Either way, orphans were involved. I'm just not sure if they were being harvested for organs, or sold whole. Either way: Tony = bad guy.) While in the Imaginarium, Valentina finds out the truth about Tony. She runs away, meets the Devil and comes to her choice. Still mad at her dad, she chooses the Devil's choice out of spite.

I'm tricksy and false.

Parnassus is devastated. The Devil offers to make one more bet: if Parnassus can kill Tony, he'll give him his daughter back. Tony is being chased by an angry mob. Parnassus catches up with him, and finds out how he's survived the previous hanging- he put a pipe down his throat to prevent strangling. Tony tries to explain to Parnassus that the Devil was just tricking him, that Valentina couldn't count as the fifth soul since she was the prize, and if he helps him get away, he'll pick the correct "Dr. Parnassus" choice and Valentina will be saved. Dr. Parnassus doesn't listen and helps the mob finally succeed in killing him. The Devil shows up and tells Dr. Parnassus that he doesn't know where his daughter is. He says he never really had her in the first place.

It's many years later. Dr. Parnassus is sad, and still old. He's begging for money and someone that looks like Valentina drops some money in his cup. He follows her and sees she married Anton and has a daughter. He doesn't interfere, and with his midget friend, decides to sell puppet shows on the street. The end.

Not going to lie. This movie was little bit crazy pants.

Questions:
What was the Devil? He was clearly Parnassus's adversary, but he wasn't necessarily "evil." Jill thinks he was just indifference. I think he represented something closer to realism, or cynicism. A world without imagination, or faith, or story. The "Dr. Parnassus" choices (for the most part), seemed to involve a great sacrifice for something greater than yourself. For an ideal that you valued. And the "Devil" choice was the quick easy way to get a cheap imitation of that ideal.

What was Valentina's choice? Valentina chose the Devil in the end. Valentina's choice was between a door that said "his" and a door that said "hers." She clearly went through the Devil's door ("his"). When she went through, the Devil said, "Damn. I've won." But she wasn't blown up, and the Devil told Parnassus he never really had her. Did she not really make her choice? Did it not count? She left the world of Dr. Parnassus for the real world. But then, that real family-life always was her ideal dream, her imagination.

What was Health Ledger's character supposed to be? The movie played up his huge significance -- the cards don't lie, the hanging man, etc. -- but he ended up being largely inconsequential. He did help drive parts of the story, but he didn't mean anything to it. The story had nothing to do with him, he just happened to be there for most of it.

Overall impressions:
I think I liked it. It was beautifully made and well-acted, but I was never sure what was at stake, or why it was so important for Dr. Parnassus to win. It wasn't difficult to be entertained by what was happening, but it was hard to be really invested.

Yet another useful list

Currently in my stack of books to read, in no particular order:

• The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
• The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula K. Le Guin
  
• Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta
• The Last Continent, by Terry Pratchett (I keep wanting to read something of his, but don't know where to start. I pulled this off of the bookstore shelf randomly. Well. The wizard hat wearing kangaroo did influence me a little bit. Any fans of his that could point me to a better starting place?)
• The Chosen, Chaim Potok
• The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Naylor
• The Ruby in the Smoke, Philip Pullman
• Rough Stone Rolling, Richard Bushman (Someday, I will finish this book.)
• Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  

What's in your stack?

The Lovely Bones

NOTE: As long as you've seen the previews for this movie, this post contains no spoilers.

Movie #2 this year: The Lovely Bones. (Movie #1 was An Education. I'm going to try and write mini-review/reaction posts to the movies I see this year, but I probably won't write one for An Education. I really liked it. If I take too long to get my thoughts down about a movie, that's about all I can articulate.)

Anyway. Just got back from seeing this, and I was really unsure about what I thought about the whole thing. When I'm like that after seeing a movie, I like to go to rottentomatoes.com and read what other people thought about it. I was surprised, this movie has a pretty low overall rating: 37%. There's no doubt this film was beautifully made, and the acting was fantastic. This wasn't like Avatar (grossly overrated at 82%), I wasn't rolling my eyes and compulsively checking the time or anything. I was invested for the entire film. But I can't say I enjoyed it. Never before have I longed so intently to be able to fast forward like I did during this movie. I even turned to my sister during a particularly horrifying sequence and said, "I don't like this. This needs to end faster." One of the reviews I read better explains my reaction:

The same opening that's compelling on the page - "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" - becomes the focus of dread for a movie audience, because we know, sooner or later, that we're going to be forced to sit through something we don't want to see. Even if director Peter Jackson ultimately chooses not to render the murder in graphic terms, actually seeing a young girl being tricked by a predator and gradually becoming terrified feels more than disturbing. It feels profane.

To be specific, it feels almost as if, by watching, we're violating her, too - not Susie Salmon, the central character, and not Saoirse Ronan, the brilliantly talented young actress who plays her - but all the real-life Susies. Even when presented with sensitivity, respect and taste, there's just something unsettling about public entertainment that's made from this particular variety of private suffering.

What is there to be gained from this, that we should feel worse? Or come to some false sense of understanding that makes us feel better about something we shouldn't feel better about?

For what it puts the audience through -- watching the scene where she is murdered -- I don't think the rest of the movie redeems itself. It isn't graphic in terms of gore and violence, but I felt like I just witnessed real evil. I can handle emotional movies, movies that explore the dark side of the human experience, but that emotional experience must have some element of truth.

I have this personal philosophy which partially involves what I call the stained-glass idea. When I was in England on study abroad, my class went to the Winchester Cathedral. In that cathedral, there is a stained glass window that was once shattered by Cromwell's armies. The parishioners of the cathedral gathered up the broken shards of glass and tried to rebuild the window. There are some parts where you can almost make out what the window might have looked like before, but most of it is a jumbled collage. I think there is an absolute Truth, but that it's like that window. It's shattered, and everyone has a few of the pieces. I don't think we have the ability to really see what pure Truth is, in this life. The best we can do is try to understand the pieces we have and to try and share them with others, to find out how our pieces of "truth" match together. And in the way they come together, try to see more truth. I think we do this best by sharing our stories through literature, music, film, and other forms of art. In order to get a better idea of the full window, I need to try to understand other people's pieces of truth. Other people's stories can be horrifying, but if I feel like I've seen a shred of real truth in them, that they are worth hearing.

I am having a difficult time seeing any truth in this movie, enough to justify the horror. I haven't read the book. I've heard it's really good. Many of the reviews claim that it's overall tone was much better than the movie. I may read it, but I'm going to have to get over the experience of seeing the movie first. If you loved the book and really want to see the movie, I recommend that you wait until you can rent it. Believe me, you'll be very grateful for that fast forward button.

100% Chance

I am being encouraged by Jill to share my random ranting about meaningless things. Maybe she's sick of being the sole recipient of these rants. Maybe this is the first step in her master evil plan to turn me into that crazy lady on the corner that's angrily yelling at what may or may not be an imaginary leprechaun on her shoulder. (Imaginary or not, being taunted by leprechauns is OBNOXIOUS.)

Whatever her reasons, I think it's a capital idea. Quite quite indeed. Top hat, monocle! Fancy ballgowns. (Crap. Her evil plan is working.) So here is my first in what may be many rants about random meaningless things. (And by "random" I usually mean "prompted by reading internet message boards.")

Very Important Rant #1: 100% Chance

• Jamie: does it really make sense to say there's a "100% chance" of something? doesn't the 100% negate the chance?
• Jill: valid point
• Jamie: wouldn't you just say "this is going to happen"
• Jill: yeah
• Jamie: what they should say, what they mean, is 99% chance. as in very very likely.
• Jill: right
• Jamie: and don't even get me STARTED on 110% chance.
• Jill: who is "they"?
• Jamie: internet peeps mostly
• Jill: haha
• Jill: that'd be a funny little blog post