August 2010 Archives

I was recently subjected to a feeble and mildly irritating insult from someone wearing too much makeup, a silly hat and an EFY t-shirt. It took little time to shrug off the attempted insult, but I did have to struggle to figure out what on earth EFY stands for.

Then it hit me: Everybody Fuck Yourself.

But no: that's only what it SHOULD stand for, or, God willing, what it WILL stand for in the future, most of the time. Currently, its main association is with BYU's Especially For Youth program. Which I think is what the t-shirt wearer was involved with.

But as a bit of internet slang, EFY has a lot of potential. Just lost a flame war? Bow out with the parting shot EFY. Thinking everyone you're talking to is a stupid douchebag who should, well, fuck themselves? Just write EFY and they'll get the message.

I encourage you to find uses of your own for this vibrant, useful and exciting acronym.

TTFN! (Yeah, I'm old school. I prefer that to TTYL.)

The worst illness I've had in years coincided with my mother's death. Travel arrangements were complicated by the fact that I was too sick to fly after I went to meet my mother's doctor at the Mayo Clinic, which actually worked for the best since it meant I couldn't leave my parents' house when I'd planned and instead was there when my mother collapsed and entered the final phase of her illness.

But it still really sucked to have a head so full of phlegm that I couldn't get on a plane without my eardrum bursting. I had a chest infection, an eye infection, and both a middle and inner ear infection. God, it was AWFUL, though admittedly not as bad as liver failure.

I finally resorted to antibiotics to clear it all up, which I don't like doing because I'm allergic to a lot of them. I also tried every home remedy I'd ever used successfully in the past. My favorite was hot water with lots of lemon, ginger and honey. It's not surprising that I would like that, since I love ginger beer, which is basically the same thing except served carbonated and cold.

I almost bought a four-pack of Reed's Ginger Beer the other day at the grocery store. It's been so hot, and a cold, crisp ginger ale is really refreshing.... but Reed's is a bit pricey and I'm trying to economize. Then it occurred to me to me to wonder: could I make my own?

So here's what I did:

Check it out:

The water at the northwest corner of the Great Salt Lake is pink. It's PINK. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Spiral Jetty, the color of the water "is due the presence of salt-tolerant bacteria and algae that thrive in the extreme 27 percent salinity of the lake's north arm, which was isolated from fresh water sources by the building of a causeway by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1959."

The reason I discovered this is of course that I visited the Spiral Jetty, which I've wanted to do since I moved to Utah. In case you haven't heard of the Spiral Jetty, it's a sculpture constructed in 1970 by American sculptor Robert Smithson. It's hard to describe why this counter-clockwise spiral of rock jutting into a lakebed is so magic, but it is. It just is. Even with no water lapping at the rocks, it's magic. I was going to offer a feeble but inadequate account of why it's magic, but then I decided I'd just offer some photos instead--I'd let this be one of the times when a picture stands in for 1,000 words.

At Sunstone (which was amazing! The best symposium EVER!) I got into a discussion about whether the leaders of the Mormon church were wielders of power or servants. The model at the Community of Christ are that the people who hold leadership positions are supposed to serve through those positions. They minister. They're not just authority figures.

The argument was then made that the same is true of the leaders of the COJCOLDS.

But it's not true.

What's the name for the men in the positions of power in the church? They're general AUTHORITIES. I'll believe they're servants when they change their names to general SERVANTS.

They don't serve. They authorize. They impose policy. They are the prime shapers and beneficiaries of the power structure, and WE are THEIR servants. And that's the way they want it.