All My Gettings

So, I'm entirely uncertain why, when forced to come up with female figures from the book of Mormon, people totally forget Abish. Ok, that's a lie. I'm not entirely uncertain. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that most folks aren't paying that much attention by the time they get to Alma. I mean, it's all wars and the chopping off of arms and the harlot Isabel^*. What chance does a story that actually holds direct bearing on modern believers' lives actually have?

Abish is the female servant of King Lamoni's wife (talking about women in the book of Mormon is tricky, as you make use of a lot of genitives [Nephi's wife, the daughters of Jared, etc]) who sees the whole royal household collapse and then decides it makes the perfect missionary moment. When the people get together, they start thinking maybe it's actually some evil trick of Ammon's, that he's killed the whole family. Abish becomes visibly upset by their discussions. You can almost hear her scream, "No! Why don't you just believe me?" She then wakes up the queen by touching her (proof of female priesthood, anyone?). Then, everybody's up and testifying of the great things they saw and heard. In essence, Abish experiences what a lot of modern missionaries do: the complete disjunction between what they feel and what others take from the exact same situation.

Why is all of this pertinent? Because I'm entirely unsure how I feel about Real Hero Posters. For instance, the exact dates? How white the people are? But I do know that making some lame "Daughters of the Wilderness" attempt is ridiculous given the fact that we have a story of an actual female spiritual hero. Also, doesn't Enos look a little...elfin here?

*Isabel is probably the best-recognized named harlot in Mormonism (even more so than Rahab of Jericho, though her story is probably cooler. But it's probably a bad idea to get me started on Mormons' selective memory about the Old Testament). She's also one of four women in the Book of Mormon graced with a proper name. However, I have a (totally unaccepted) theory that Isabel isn't a name, but rather a title. One rendering from Hebrew would be 'Isa Ba'al (Wife/Mistress of Ba'al). Which then raises questions about how we know that Corianton's sin is sexual and not some form of idolatry.

Every now and then I'm struck with this panic. Basically, it centers on the fact that someone will start seriously questioning my ability to perform my job. Maybe they'll notice how I haven't built a library website. Or that my budget tracking system is in total disarray. Or, worst yet, they'll start looking a little closer at the books I've decided we needed in our collection and it won't add up. Some titles are easily defended, like The Complete Tintin. Others are less defensible (Crunch! The History of the Potato Chip, my book of hilarious Peep poses, Stacked Decks--a history of erotic playing cards, etc, etc.).

But then, the fear subsides and I start thinking, hey, I really should just go ahead and order whatever I want. So, my next order will most certainly include this.

• Bacon & Blueberry Scones. I know, who would have thought?
• Jeffrey Donovan, who really makes Burn Notice what it is (and what it is is a delightful television experience). Do you think we could somehow nominate Michael Westen's smile for some sort of acting award?
• Alain de Botton. This isn't a new thing, but anybody who can bend genres so seamlessly and then include the alternatively heartbreaking and hilarious in one book has won me over. I want to have his intellectual babies. Need proof? Take his imagined personal ad for Marcel Proust from Kiss and Tell:

  GAY WRITER PARIS AREA, close to mother, asthmatic, keen on socialising, Vermeer, long sentences, Anatole France, chauffeurs, men if bearing women's names, Venice. Problems with travel, being brief, getting to bed without a kiss. At work on a big project. Send photo.

  Want even more?

  We may be forced to identify our lovers from a cripplingly small pool of choices. In trying to explain the more inexplicable love stories, one may have to answer the question, 'Why them" with the gloomy thought, 'Did you see the others?'

• Studying the D&C in Sunday School. Hands down my favorite tome of scripture, and, for some reason, people act like they've never read half of it before. (I am less for having quotes of third-hand experiences of David O. McKay shared by the recorded voice of Hyrum W. Smith, who is not, it turns out, an apostle, but rather the founder of the Franklin-Covey company. Though, Church movies with coordinated polo shirts? Brilliant.)
• My recent trip to Chicago. Seriously, I loved every. single. minute. Turns out, I have the best friends ever. Way to go, guys.
• Having another week of work to get done all that stuff that I was supposed to be working on over the break
And, lastly
• Reading a book by an author that stands to be the start of a lovely relationship with all their works. Welcome to my obsessions, Allegra Goodman.

I've done a lot of embarrassing and stupid things during this quarter of culinary school. There was that time I caught my apron on fire, for instance. Or the time I gashed my hand boning chickens and didn't notice for about fifteen minutes. Once, I was told to roast red peppers and ended up making a muddle of it all, not blacking them enough and almost losing one to the gaping hole of the range. But it's not even that high-level stuff always that flummoxes me. Based on my performance in class, you'd think I couldn't: 1. fry an egg, 2. remember that metal pans in the oven get hot (I've burned myself three times on this oversight), 3. soft-boil an egg, or 4. make steamed rice.

I'm not sure what it is, but it seems that as soon as I cross the threshold of the kitchens, I lose basic culinary skills. I become all thumbs and sort of dim-witted. I think a lot of this has to do with feeling totally intimidated by all the other students who seem to have some sort of native skill set that I don't have. It's the skill set that allows them to salt entrees perfectly or cut allumettes that don't look like a blind two-year old was in charge. Good thing I've not really planning on trying to compete with those people for jobs, right?

The single most humiliating experience happened earlier this week, though. We were making some stewed beef and needed beef stock. The stock we had to work with was in this huge container, probably holding about about 4 gallons. The stock had been frozen and then thawed...sort of. There was a huge chunk of ice in the center. The chef instructor told me to remove the ice and then scoop out the stock I needed. So, I went to, grabbing the block of ice. I got the cube almost to the top of the container when it slipped. And it fell. Back into the huge vat of stock. I'm sure you've seen where this is going: there was an explosion of beefy juice EVERYwhere. It looked like a scene in a movie where an underwater charge goes off and sends spray from heck to breakfast.

I got drenched. I soaked the floor. I even got stock somehow between my apron and coat. I reeked of cow parts and onion the rest of the night. Fortunately, the other person who got hit by beef splash just found it funny and everybody else was not paying close enough attention to notice what I had done.

I keep telling myself that it'll get better, that once I'm in the world of flour, sugar, creaming and the baked goodness that I love; that things won't turn out so poorly; that I'm not a totally lost cause. I hope that's true. I also hope, someday, to put on my chef's coat and not suddenly wonder where that demiglace smell is coming from. I'm not sure which of those hopes is the easiest to fulfill, but I'm not ready to give up on either just yet.

Most of the time, I feel the way about love that Alice does in the novel The Romantic Movement when she's decided to break up with Eric. He tries to convince her to stay by saying "I love you" and she thinks:

So many hopes surround the word, one may with confidence take love out of its packet in the midst of almost any crisis, and count on it having a miraculous effect, a complete loss of critical faculties accompanied by salival, beatific grins.

“May I ask why you’re currently making my life insufferable, abusing my credit card, polluting my bathroom, wrecking my kitchen and playing pin-ball with my mind? Ah, I see. It’s because you love me. Oh, well now I understand, in that case, fine, go ahead, and don’t forget to burn down the house and hit the other cheek before you’re done.”

But lately, and much to my dismay, I've been lonely for some sort of romantic interest. Though, interest isn't exactly the right word, since there's lost of people floating around that I'm interested in. So, a romantic counterpart, perhaps? Someone to spend time with, to share my affection, to be on the same team with, and, of course, annoy and be annoyed by, hate occasionally and care about in that way that only really comes when there's a combination of emotional and physical ties.

I fear I'm feeling a bit desperate about all this, but hopefully not acting it. Also, I'm so hideously shy in this arena that I'm basically paralyzed and stagnating. It probably doesn't help that fewer and fewer of my friends are single, in the sense that they're married. Maybe the mood'll pass, right? And then I can go back to being the person who's (almost) mostly alright with living and dying solo.

As most of you know, I have no love for Sen. Chris Buttars, who recently won re-election for reasons I have yet to fully understand. You might call me a lousy liberal who just wants to crucify this man for his backwards, stupid, bumbling word choices. However, I'd like to hope that a recent vote in the Utah State Senate highlights how absurd this man's view of government is.

Robert Hilder was up for appointment to Utah's court of appeals. He had some of the highest marks on jury and lawyer surveys of any judge in the state. And he was rejected by the senate. It seems like the reason behind this was a ruling a few years back where you allowed the University of Utah to forbid concealed weapons. This is, of course, an affront to gun rights advocates who find it necessary to attend SOC 1100 packing heat.

Some of the concerns of Sen. Buttars, though, are more fundamental. He claims there should only be one "sovereign" in the state: the Legislature. Wait a minute...checks and balances? Judicial review? Maybe the Leg is just good enough in Utah that they don't need anyone to tell them what they did is unconstitutional or just plain wrong.

During the hearings, Buttars also said, "I've been on this committee for six years. I have never received, in all of the hearings, the e-mail that I've received for this case - well over 1,000. What's fascinating, is you can divide these among citizens who say no, and judges and lawyers who say yes. And, I'll tell you something else, if I get any issue and there's 1,000 lawyers on this side, and 1,000 citizens on the other side - I'm going to go with the citizens."

So, lawyers are no longer citizens, it seems. Also, heaven forbid that you listen to people who may have actually worked with the judge, or have some sort of informed opinion about whether or not he can do the job well. I just...don't understand Buttars' political viewpoint. At all.

In other, slightly depressing Utah government news, Margaret Dayton was appointed to head up the Senate Rules Committee, the one that decides if bills are passed on to vote. Why is this possibly a bad option? Because Sen. Dayton, you may not remember, is the one who raised questions about the "international" nature of the IB program in Utah high schools.

Sometimes, I think it'd be interesting to live in a state where rabid conservatism isn't seen as a step in the right direction. Maybe, though, just maybe, the probate bill will pass and gay couples in Utah will have a few rights. I'm not holding my breath on that one, though.

So, Mallard Fillmore doesn't really make sense to me. Is it ever funny? But, more pressingly, is it ever appropriate to compare the controversy surrounding cartoon mascots to the holocaust?

World War I, I think, wins the award for Most Earnest Propaganda, a title that is pretty impressive, given the nature of propaganda in general. We know that WWI came about in part because of the jingoism of the European monarchies, but did they have to be so chipper and positive about it all? One of my favorites is the one shown above. A young girl asks her middle-aged father what he had done to fight back the Hun scourge. Apparently, his blank expression tells us that, rather than risk trench warfare for England, he had done something dishonorable, like working an office in London rather than dying horribly in a trench in France.

There's a powerful sense in this poster that Britain knew it was involved in shaping the history of tomorrow. Sitting on the sidelines is no longer an option, you've got to man up and become part of the planned glory of victory. I also like the insecurity that's being played on here. Men seeing this poster are supposed to be shamed into signing up. But shamed by the possibility that, in the future, their as-yet-unborn kids will think less of them for not carrying a gun. It takes a certain kind of personality to be urged to get involved by this thought. And, apparently, I have that personality.

The current fight over gay marriage seems to me to be what we will all look back on as my generation's Vietnam. It's the major social issue that is spurs intense political action and ire from both sides of America. And I feel sort of like I'm sleeping through it. I'm frustrated by my church's involvement in the anti position enough to complain to everybody I cross paths with but not enough to sign a letter to the first presidency decrying it or to show up for a rally at Temple Square. In fact, the fallout of Proposition 8's passing has, unaccountably, put me on the defensive for Mormonism. Not so much for this particular PR nightmare, but for all the things on the periphery that seem to be roiled up by the issue. I'm halting between two opinions (which is the second half of my personal narrative after being designed contrary to happiness). And, being lukewarm, I'll be spewed out by both sides.

And it's not an issue that I want to be on the "winning" side, I don't think. As far as I can tell, there's no winner here. If the Church gets its way, gays are second-class citizens. If the civil rights wins, the church loses (though what they lose is entirely unclear to me). I still firmly believe the Church should just let it alone and that gay marriage is actually the right answer. I'm just a little hesitant to move myself to anything that might actually include any effort on my part. It seems like the only explanation here is some uncovered fear I'm holding onto. What, I wonder, am I really afraid of? And, at the other end of my life, what will I have to say to those people who ask me, expecting an exciting, brave story, what I did during the great war for equality?