I would prefer not to, but I must obey my master.

And the campaign posters are already out.

That, if elected as President, his inaugural address will be a reasonable facsimile of this.

Or at least a palimpsest.

His Majesty was playing marbles with the cats this morning.

(more…)

From His Majesty, who was looking with distaste at the racks full of tabloids:

Sigh. I’m so grateful I’m not a celebrity. They seem to have very difficult lives.

Well, they seem to have a lot of First World problems, anyway.

This has become something of a meme, introduced as “the purpose of the universe.”  I heard it from a friend, and then a web search showed it several places, for example Reddit.

Cosmologists speculate that the primordial matter of the Big Bang was more basic than hydrogen, such as mesons, or some smaller unit.  But hydrogen, a single proton, is the most simple unit that is readily identifiable in common conversation.

My first thought was “Yeah, that’s what God does.” Moses 1:39.

[Note: I did a Google Image Search for “Mickey Mouse Evil,” and it came up with this image, which is more apropos for this post than I could have hoped for.]

This is not a Robert Ludlum novel. These are some thoughts, hopefully not too disjointed, about Mormons and The Benedict Option.

I.     “Eeek! A Mouse!”

A few months back, we went to Disneyland with my side of the family. It’s a cliché among BYU fans to note how much BYU gear one sees at Disneyland. Now I know why; even if you aren’t looking for them, Mormons are EVERYWHERE in the Magic Kingdom. You might think that I only noticed the because I’m Mormon. But my undergraduate school is one that, based on size and distance from L.A., you would expect to be on rough parity with BYU at Disneyland. Instead my college was outnumbered probably 10-to-1.

So yeah, Mormons love Disney. Back in the days of Walt himself, this would hardly warrant mentioning. Christians like good, clean family fun, and Disney = good, clean family fun.

But not all Christians like Disney. (more…)

“Teddy Robinson was a nice, big, comfortable, friendly teddy bear. He had light brown fur and kind brown eyes, and he belonged to a little girl called Deborah.”

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/teddy-robinson-neglected-classic.html

In my experience, a lot of Mormon Christians fall for these as well.

For a Mormon-believer the surprising thing would be if Jesus was not married; since marriage is regarded as necessary for the highest divine exaltation. The main apparent obstacle is that the Bible seems not to mention Jesus getting married – but maybe it does, and quite explicitly. It depends on our understanding of the key section of the key Gospel of the whole Bible; namely the events surrounding the raising of Lazarus in John’s Gospel. I am going to state why there is good reason to assume that Jesus married Mary of Bethany/ Magdalene at the time of the anointing of Jesus with spikenard, and the wiping of it with her hair. I am assuming here that this event would have been clearly understood by John and his contemporary readers as describing the known ritual of a divine, royal marriage…

Read the whole thing at:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/was-jesus-married.html

Note: FairMormon regards this as officially an open-question:

http://en.fairmormon.org/Jesus_Christ/Was_Jesus_married

In Darth Vader’s tears.

There’s no lack.

And its new pontifex maximus.

There seems to be grass roots support.

(more…)

They are becoming what they once loathed. So even if they win, they’ve already lost.

11 years ago my first daughter died of cancer. This is what I wrote on her birthday that year, with slight updates since. Today would be Betsey’s 15th birthday. Happy Birthday, sweetheart, it’s been a long time and always getting longer.
(more…)

“That’s one party down, one to go.  The job is only half done.”

Thus Scott Adams.