February 2010 Archives

I'm pleased to announce that I have an essay in the forthcoming issue of Bitch. The print version won't be out until March, but the online version is already up. I'm not going to link to it here, because as I've mentioned, my blog is semi-anonymous, meaning I try to keep my last name out of it, even though I know most of my readers know who I am. If you want to read the piece in Bitch (and I hope you do), just go to the magazine's website and look for the preview of the next issue.

Also: Two of my entries from 2009 have been nominated for Brodies* at Main Street Plaza! The Priesthood is Magic is nominated in the "best LDS gender roles discussion" category while Mormon Alumni Association is up for "best life beyond Mormonism post."

I am proud of both entries, though I admit to being especially pleased by the recognition of the post on the Mormon Alumni Association, since that is an idea that has gained some traction in post-Mormondom in general.

Anyway, if you feel so inclined, please read or reread the various nominations, and vote! Polls close February 22.

*The awards are named after Fawn Brodie, who wrote No Man Knows My History, the first non-hagiographic biography of Joseph Smith. The book has irritated believing Mormons no end ever since its publication in 1945, because although Brody admired Joseph Smith enormously, she concluded from her research that most of his claims were false.

I would say that watching this made me feel sick, but illness is too risky these days, given what's going on.

Yeah, I know: all I do lately is post links and videos.

Hey. I'm busy.

And at least they're good links and videos.

1. OK, what's really amazing to me about this ad is that someone honestly thinks women could peel their eyes off this guy....

Pretty damn clever, as far as I'm concerned. It almost makes me want to smell like Old Spice myself.

2. I have to thank Facebook for this--it suggested I become a fan of Unhappy Hipsters, and I certainly have. It both amuses me and lets me feel superior to the people whose lives it mocks, even though they have way more money than I ever will. I especially liked this recent entry about kids made surly by being forced to watch a documentary on Bauhaus.

I love this short article from the NY Times about "embodied cognition," or the fact that knowledge is not something located, experienced and processed only in our minds, but in our entire beings. Very cool.

Yesterday I went to a screening of a really boring, unsuccessful documentary ostensibly and nominally about forgiveness. I say it that way because although the film--or rather, the first half of the four-hour film--claimed to explore forgiveness, it spent most of its time discussing the offenses and crimes that someone then did or didn't forgive. And there were some pretty horrific crimes: torture and murder in South Africa under Apartheid, the shooting of Amish school girls in Pennsylvania, two college girls out camping in Oregon and being run over by a truck before being attacked with an ax, the murder of a cop during a bank robbery.... there was so much attention to these crimes that the movie felt like some sort of investigative piece you'd see on the Discovery channel.

As for what it actually had to say about forgiveness, that was pretty trite and unsurprising. I didn't hear a single thing I hadn't encountered several times before in either a Sunday school class, a self-help book, or both. In fact, aside from grisly details about the crimes presented in the movie, the only truly memorable thing it contained was when a woman who had to forgive A) herself for being a drug addict and stealing from her daughter and B) her boyfriend for giving her HIV, told the camera that as a result of learning to forgive, she could sleep very well, and that at night her life was so peaceful "you can hear the ants pissing outside."

Unsuccessful and boring as the movie was, it did make me think that a thorough exploration of the topic is warranted--in some other forum. This project should not have been a movie but a book--a thorough, well-researched, well-documented, well-edited, scholarly exploration of the history of forgiveness and current ideas about it.