Adventures in Amoxicillin

We had some fun with projectile vomiting today. TRC stayed home. He has strep throat. He's on the pink stuff* now, and he's feeling quite a bit better, thanks for asking. Last night was less than fun, but today has been okay. (Of course, it doesn't help that I'm now feeling sick, too. No sore throat yet, though. DC had a bad something or other a few days ago, so I'm kind of waiting this one out to see if it just stays a general sickness like hers or turns into strep, too. Blech.)

Anyway--all was going fine. TRC was eating breakfast and drinking juice while watching PBS.

Then, Mount St. TRC erupted.

The couch, the rug, Denisa's pajamas--you name it. I was lying down in bed when it happened, but I arrived for the aftermath and the cleanup.

It's not pretty.

Wherever you are today, be glad you're not sick.

*Confession to make. I still remember how that stuff tastes, and I'm always a bit jealous when my kids get to take it. Am I alone in this?

In Which I Feel Like a Jerk

Remember that post of mine yesterday? The funny one where I gave the nice little anecdote about my son feeling "sick" in an effort to stay home from school?

They called from school today. I had to go pick him up because he had a fever of 101. He's now resting on the couch.

In other news, I'm getting a headache and am starting to feel flushed myself.

Is that karma knocking? Oh well, I'd better go answer it . . .

In the meantime, why don't you all go over and check out my friend Isaac's website, Inkwing? He did the book design for my Cavern of Babel book, and he also did much of the internal artwork for Brandon Sanderson's books. You can get a cool Mistborn Llama t-shirt, and much more. Go Isaac!

Skipping School and Growing Up

So TRC had some issues with going to school today. It was my night shift at the library last night, so I was asleep when it started, and eventually it escalated to the point where Denisa came to get back up from me. Here's how the conversation played out:

Me: So, you're sick, huh?
TRC: Yeah.
Me: How sick?
TRC: Well, I coughed four times, and I've already used five tissues.
Me: Do you think you need to go to the doctor's?
TRC: No!
Me: Oh. Do you have a fever?
TRC: No.
Me: Are you throwing up?
TRC: No.
Denisa: If we were going to go to the movies, would you go?
TRC: No. (pause, thinking) Well, yes.
Me: I don't think you're sick enough to stay home.
TRC: But I stayed home from Kindergarten when I was this sick.
Me: Kindergarten doesn't count.
TRC: I wish I were still in Kindergarten.
Me: Why don't you want to go to school?
TRC: Well, I'll get there, and I have to work on my journal and then do more work, and we only have one recess now, and . . .
Me: It's not as much fun, huh.
TRC: Yeah. Why would I need to go to the doctor's?
Me: Because you have to go to school, and if you don't go to school, they like to know why.
TRC: Oh.

After some further discussion, it was decided he was well enough to go to school, and he and I would play a game tonight when we both came home. The discussion got me thinking, mainly about how I still feel like TRC some of the time. Don't we all? Going to work can be difficult. The poor guy is just getting his first taste for what will be a life long issue.

Let's all have a moment of silence for TRC.

Dear British Airways,

Dear British Airways,

I don't usually dislike entire corporations. I mean, you typically have to do some pretty stupid things to make me start to think negatively about an entire company. But in your case, I think you've made the cut. You certainly went above and beyond the call of duty to make me dislike you.

What did you do, you ask?

Well, there was that time in Vienna when you made Denisa and me go traipsing around the city to get a "transit visa" for Heathrow Airport, since she comes from the dangerous country of Slovakia. (Seriously. Slovakia? Did you just go to a map and look for all the countries that ended in -ia and assume they were terrorist states? Lybia. Syria. Serbia. Slovakia. Asia.) Then, after we'd missed our flight and had to pay exorbitant fees for the darned thing, no one ever even looked at it. Yeah. That didn't do much to make me respect you as an airline, especially when we bought the ticket from you in the first place, and no mention was made of any transit visa.

What a racket.

So I already disliked you. But today, you were heartless enough to be completely unsympathetic to a person in need. When someone finds out someone they love just died, and they're calling you up to find out about changing travel arrangements, telling that person you don't do "discounts" for "any reason" and being callous about it--enough to make said person cry--is beyond insensitive and well into the realm of barbaric.

Of course, this is just little old me here. Maybe I don't amount to much, but at least I can write a Letter to the Internet, informing people that I think you're a bad company with awful customer support. I don't plan on using your airline again in the future, and if I do end up being forced to, it will be solely because I have no other choice.

I encourage all my readers to do the same.

Writing Full Time

For reasons I can't really get into at the moment, I've been doing a lot of writing lately. A lot lot of writing. Like, an hour in the morning, a half hour during my lunch break, then six hours when I get home (assuming I haven't been otherwise occupied with a certain woodshed). Today, I'm home sick, but--you guessed it--I'm still writing. It's been like this for the past few weeks.

So what does it feel like, writing full time in addition to working full time?

Stressful. I'm not much of a two full time sort of a guy, I don't think. Writing for me is usually a relaxing thing I do for a change of pace each day, sort of like the Beethoven class I wrote about yesterday. I'm okay with this binge writing for now (because an end is in sight, and I'm doing it for a particular purpose), but I definitely couldn't do both on a long term basis. Which is good, since I don't see my writing as picking up enough to support my family all on its lonesome. I typically write about 500 words a day. Sometimes as much as 1,000. That's a pace that can churn out a good book or two a year (YA length), plus give me time for revisions, should the need arise. (Of course, what with plotting and reworking plotting, I seldom get two books done in a year. I'm happy to get one done.) I know that if I needed to or wanted to, I could up the daily word count to 1,000 and still be fine working full time, too.

Not really sure what else I want to say about all of this. Just an observation that there can be too much of a good thing sometimes, I suppose. It's hard to force yourself to be creative for long stretches, but sometimes, that's what you have to do.

Anyway, I still have about 14 pages I want revised by the end of the day, minimum. And they're 14 tricky pages. Not easy ones. Which is why I've been writing this blog post, instead. And it's also why I have to stop now.

Have a nice weekend, everyone. And send good thoughts my way.

Why I'm Taking a Class on Beethoven

You all know how much I've been complaining about how busy I've been. Of course you do--if you've been reading at all consistently, you're probably sick of hearing about poor me. In fact, some of you are probably not reading this, since you wandered to other corners of the internet due to just how much I've been complaining about my business. It's like the dentist chain of articles a couple of years ago, just with less Novocaine.

So it might surprise you all to hear that I'm taking a class for the first time in four years or so. An in-person class for the first time since by MA in American Lit from BYU.

"What are you thinking?" I know you want to say it. Well, I'll tell you what I'm thinking.

I enjoy learning. There's something massively therapeutic for me to be able to set aside all this business for an hour and a half twice a week, go to a classroom, and study something entirely unrelated to everything else I've been doing. No woodsheds, no YA fantasy, no cataloging--just Beethoven, the studies of symphonies, and opera clips. Yesterday we looked at pieces from The Marriage of Figaro and Fidelio. You know what? I felt like I started to finally "get" opera. It was a really enjoyable experience. On Monday, we listened to the Egmont overture while following along with the score. Fantastic.

I'm just auditing the class, which means no tests, no papers, no "did you do your homework?" At this point, I'd say this class is one of the few things keeping me sane this semester. The professor does a fantastic job making the material come alive for the class, the students are actively involved and seem eager to be there, and I get to learn and reminisce about my undergrad years, all at the same time.

I highly recommend it.

Even if you're wicked busy.

King of Kong Update

Have you seen King of Kong? It's one of the coolest documentaries I've come across in quite some time. I reviewed it back in 2008, saying, "For those of you who haven't heard about it, it's a documentary that focuses on an average guy who decides to try and break the world record for highest score in Donkey Kong, not knowing that he's treading into ubergeek territory, since the current record holder is the equivalent of a video game geek god. A fascinating look into a world I never really knew existed, and I'm not exactly a non-geek myself. Four stars (despite finding out later online that some of the facts of the movie are a little misrepresented--it still works great as a film)."

Well, one of the things you find out in the movie (spoiler alert!) is that the record keeps waffling back and forth between different people. Steve Wiebe, the hero of the film, is a normal schmo who wants to break the record for fun. Billy Mitchell, the villain, is a self-obsessed video game god with a slew of "ins" in the video game community.

Why do I bring this up? Because the world record just changed hands again two days ago. Steve Wiebe, winnin' it for the little guys. Check out the press release here. Anyone ever seen this movie? You owe it to yourself to watch it. Good times.

Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!

That's right. Another birthday has arrived for yours truly. I'm 32 today. And the popular question everyone's had for me so far is: what am I going to do today? Well, I'll tell you. I'm going to be at work, then I'm going to go home and work on writing, followed by a family birthday party, and probably some more writing after that. I sure do know how to party, don't I? I've got a lot of writing to do, and if I'm not doing that, then I need to scrape the barn. Choices, choices . . .

I suppose if I start feeling particularly festive, I might watch a movie. I'm thinking a tried and true classic. Am I in the mood for Private Eyes? Maybe Clue? Or how about Better Off Dead? The possibilities are endless . . .


At any rate, what I'm not going to do today is spend a long time on my blog. So that's about all you're getting from me. Toodles!

Sunday Talk: Tithing

For all those curious as to what I subjected an entire congregation of 180 people to for 20 minutes, here's the full text of my talk. It took me long enough to write--at least I can get a blog post out of it, too. NOTE: not all references are given. In my rush, I cut and pasted scripture with abandon. Hopefully God doesn't bust me for the sloppy citation work.



“He that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming.” D&C 64:23 That’s it. That’s my talk. I’ll give you three guesses which bishopric member gave it to me. I have to admit that I was somewhat taken aback when I read the topic. I don’t consider myself a big fire and brimstone kind of guy, and that verse smells pretty strongly of sulfur. It hasn’t been easy for me to come up with a twenty minute talk based on eleven words of scripture I don’t typically quote on a regular basis, but I’ve tried. Bear with me.

When I got the assignment, I did what I typically do with a scripture: I put it in context. This revelation was given in Kirtland on September 11, 1831 through Joseph Smith, and it’s directed at some of the brethren in Kirtland who were preparing to leave for Missouri the next month. Verses 23 through 25 read:   Behold, now it is called today until the coming of the Son of Man, and verily it is a day of sacrifice, and a day for the tithing of my people; for he that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming.
 24 For after today cometh the burning—this is speaking after the manner of the Lord—for verily I say, tomorrow all the proud and they that do wickedly shall be as stubble; and I will burn them up, for I am the Lord of Hosts; and I will not spare any that remain in Babylon.
 25 Wherefore, if ye believe me, ye will labor while it is called today.

I’ll be honest. Scriptures like these have never really rubbed me the right way. For me, one of the biggest appeals of the gospel is how inclusive it is. When Joseph Smith went to the woods to pray in 1820, in many ways it was a reaction to the religious furor in his area at the time. The teachings of the day described a very exclusive heaven and an inclusive hell. Choose the wrong church, and you’d be paying for it for eternity. Our religion teaches the opposite: most people will be headed to a heaven of one degree or another. Outer darkness, on the other hand, is a very exclusive club. On the surface, this scripture seems to go against that trend. “He that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming.” Are we sinners in the hands of an angry debt-collector?

Part of me really doesn’t want to believe in a god who, in order to punish someone who didn’t pay tithing, would resort to mass incineration. The US government doesn’t even do that, regardless of your political persuasion. So when I read verses like the one this talk is based upon, my knee-jerk reaction is to interpret it metaphorically. Surely God wouldn’t literally burn his children. It must mean that those who don’t pay tithing risk the spiritual torment of hell.

That was my plan when I set out to write this talk: to interpret the scripture from a metaphorical stance, distancing it from any literal application. Then I read this quote from President Hinckley in a First Presidency Message in 1982:

“Some years ago one of our brethren spoke of the payment of tithing as “fire insurance”; that statement evoked laughter. Nonetheless, the word of the Lord is clear that those who do not keep the commandments and obey the laws of God shall be burned at the time of his coming. For that shall be a day of judgment and a day of sifting, a day of separating the good from the evil. In my personal opinion no event has occurred in all the history of the earth as dreadful as will be the day of the Second Coming—no event as filled with the destructive forces of nature, as consequential for the nations of the earth, as terrible for the wicked, or as wonderful for the righteous.”

It’s pretty clear that President Hinckley was reading it in a literal light. So much for metaphorical, or at least for a purely metaphorical interpretation. Which led me to ask why. Why would a loving Heavenly Father feel the need to threaten his children with bodily harm unless they do what he tells them to do? Well, after having driven across the country in a Buick with my wife and two children, you might think I’d have a pretty good idea why a loving father would threaten something like that. But more is at play here than simple hard parenting.

One thing I’ve learned as a parent is that nebulous threats don’t add up to a whole lot when you’re dealing with children. You need specific consequences on a specific timetable. If I told my son that if he didn’t clean his room, I’d ground him when he was fourteen, I don’t think a lot of room cleaning would occur until about the week before his fourteenth birthday. Maybe the night before. I also don’t think my son’s unique in that respect. Semester after semester, I sit at the reference desk in Mantor Library and see the same pattern. Things are relatively quiet the first few months. Sure, there are the frequent inquiries about the location of the bathroom, but as far as serious research questions go, we don’t get a whole lot.

Then midterms and finals roll around, and you start seeing a plague of deathbed research papers. Students flock to the library, frantically searching for sources and panicked when they fail. It’s that whole eat drink and be merry principle in action. So if you’re going to make a threat, make sure it’s got a fairly immediate consequence.

Note what the verse says at the beginning: “now it is called today until the coming of the Son of Man.” This phrasing is used elsewhere in the scriptures, as well. D&C 45: 6, for example.
 6 Hearken, O ye people of my church, and ye elders listen together, and hear my voice while it is called today, and harden not your hearts;
In John 9: 4, Christ says,
 4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.

This lays out the concept that each of us lives according to our own timeline. We must work the works we have been sent here to accomplish while we are alive, because after we die, our “today” will be over. “He that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming.” Yes, on one hand the scripture can be interpreted to mean we will be burned if we haven’t tithed when Christ comes. But on the other hand, Christ comes for each of us when we die. The Second Coming is conveniently distant in many people’s minds. Death, on the other hand, is but a heartbeat away. So, don’t just pay your tithing to avoid getting burned sometime in the future. Pay it to avoid getting burned tomorrow. Or five minutes from now.

There I go again, getting all doom and gloom on you. My apologies. It gets better, I swear.

It’s important to point out that what we understand today as “tithing” isn’t what was referred to in this scripture. The modern law of tithing is based on the revelation given in D&C 119, given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Far West, Missouri, July 8, 1838, almost seven years after the scripture we’ve been discussing. The heading to that section states, “The law of tithing, as understood today, had not been given to the Church previous to this revelation. The term “tithing” in previous revelations had meant not just one-tenth, but all free-will offerings, or contributions, to the Church funds.” So this scripture is not, in fact, referring to the importance of paying your tithing. It’s referring to the importance of making any contribution to the Church. You could interpret this literally--as financial or material contributions--or figuratively--as contributions of time, talents and energy. Both work.

So sacrifice or else. Is that what this scripture is telling us?

As I mentioned before, my family and I drove across the country this summer, stopping at many church history sites along the way. One of the ones that stood out the most to us was the Far West temple site. There’s practically nothing there: just a fenced in lot that has a small monument to the revelations given in Far West (including tithing, by the way), along with the corner stones of the temple that was never built. My children had a good time collecting acorns, but other than that, there wasn’t much to do there. However, the spirit there was very peaceful and memorable. It felt pure to me. Untouched.

When the Saints lived in Far West, it was a rapidly growing frontier city. Today, nothing’s left of it but the countryside. While it impressed me that they had the foresight to begin work on a temple, I also wondered why God would have his people start such a project when he knew full well they wouldn’t be able to finish—that they wouldn’t even come close.

Another place that impressed me was the Kirtland Temple. The first temple built in the latter days, it cost approximately $40,000 to make. In today’s figures that’s close to a million dollars. A million dollar building, constructed by a people who were too poor to build proper housing or own enough land to support their families. People who regularly sent the heads of their households off on missions. People who sacrificed their time and talents to making the temple.

Then there was Liberty Jail, where Joseph and his brother and three other men were forced to stay through the winter, underfed, unheated and alone. They were fed poisoned food and subjected to endless taunts. The ceiling of their prison was six feet tall. One man who was imprisoned with them would walk with a permanent stoop ever after.

And of course there was Nauvoo, a city where the Saints thought they would be safe at last. They put down roots. Built beautiful brick houses. And then stayed in those houses an average of less than ninety days after they were completed before they had to leave once more. Time and time again, God required His chosen people to make sacrifices. They gave up their homes, then turned around and did it again. They built temples, then left them. They buried children and loved ones by the side of the road.

Do you start to see a trend? Time after time, the Saints were driven out, until at long last they were able to settle in the Salt Lake valley. I wondered why. One answer I came up with was this: what would have happened if Joseph Smith went straight to Salt Lake? We wouldn’t be here today, that’s for sure. Life isn’t just about where you end up, because where you ends up completely depends on how you get there. The church wouldn’t have been strong enough to sustain the members on their journey across the Rockies. They needed Nauvoo, Carthage, Liberty, Kirtland.

Sacrifice or burn. Are those our only options? I’d argue that in the end, they are. Perhaps it’s more bluntly phrased than elsewhere in the scriptures, but compare it to this:

15 Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not.
 16 For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;
 17 But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;
 18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

Or this

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, [thou] that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under [her] wings, and ye would not!

Or this

Choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

In many ways, we belong to an all or nothing church. It’s one of the things that sets us apart these days from other religions. We don’t just ask people to come to church, stay for a half hour or so, then go back home and carry about their business undisturbed. We’re an active religion. Church meetings last three hours. We don’t just listen to a sermon--at times we’re called upon to give the sermon ourselves. We don’t have teachers, we are teachers. We’re an active religion in a day where religion is becoming more and more passive, pressured by common opinion to become swayed by political correctness. True religion shouldn’t work this way. God doesn’t do polls, and He doesn’t care about popular opinion. If it were different, there never would have been that flood.

In his Lectures on Faith, Joseph Smith said that “A religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.” God doesn’t ask for a few moments of our time and attention. He demands our full heart, might, mind and strength. Because in the end, we’ll either be all his, or all not. We’re asked to sacrifice, because learning to put God’s interests before ours is necessary practice.

Many have questioned how can God be good when there’s so much evil in the world. Why are people allowed to kill other people? Why are there hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes? Who let the Holocaust happen? There have been many proposed answers to this question, answers ranging from the need for God’s children to have their free agency, or that it all evens out in the end, when God returns good for good works and evil for evil works. I have another proposed answer: there’s so much evil in the world because there’s supposed to be so much evil.

I know it sounds like I’ve delved back into the fire and brimstone routine, but I haven’t. As Latter-day Saints, we know we all lived before we came to Earth. We were capable of making good decisions and bad decisions. God presented a plan: we’d made all the progress we could make, and in order to take things to the next level, we had to leave God’s presence and come to a place where we could continue learning. The training wheels had to come off. Some didn’t agree with this plan. Lucifer thought training wheels were such a good idea, he wanted to fuse them to all bicycles in existence, then lock the steering wheels in place while he was at it. We disagreed with him.

Every single person here on the planet today is here because he or she signed up for the program. We wanted to come. We knew full well that there were going to be trials and tribulations. In fact, that’s why we were so anxious to get here. We all need our Nauvoos, Carthages, Liberties and Kirtlands. By overcoming those trials, we have opportunities to grow in ways that would be impossible without them. Yes, you can feel bad for someone conned into a bad contract against their will. But when that contract was spelled out line by line, crystal clear, and the person still signs it? The time for bellyaching is over. Don’t complain about the sacrifices we have to make--relish them. I know that’s hard to do when we’re in the middle of the journey, but once we reach our destination, I’m confident we’ll see that it was just those sacrifices that made it possible to arrive where we do. I know, for example, that without the church’s influence in my life, including all the rules and laws and service I’m required to do, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

When I was growing up, my grandmother made a deal with all her grandchildren. If we got married in the temple, and had up to that point always obeyed all church laws, from the Word of Wisdom to the Law of Chastity, she’d pay us $500. For a woman with twenty one grandchildren, that’s quite a sizable commitment. Being my grandmother, she never wasted an opportunity to remind us of her deal. I remember one time my sister Gretel and I were sitting talking with some other members of my extended family, and my sister brought up the fact that some of her friends just didn’t understand why she obeyed so many church rules. My grandmother spoke right up: “You told them about my deal, didn’t you?”

Gretel was silent for a second, then said, “Well, no. I told them about prophets and latter day revelation.”

My grandmother nodded, then said, “Sure, but the $500 helps a lot, too. Doesn’t it?”

I was very grateful for her gift when Denisa and I got married. (Yes, in case you were wondering, I cashed in. You would have, too. Admit it.) But the fact is that I didn’t follow the Word of Wisdom or the Law of Chastity for 500 bucks, just as I don’t pay my tithing as fire insurance. When Christ came to the earth, he taught that the old laws had been replaced by newer, higher laws. No longer were men supposed to live by an eye for an eye, but they were to turn the other cheek. I believe the same goes for God’s laws. We can live them because we’re afraid of the punishments, or we can live them because we want the rewards. And no, avoiding a punishment doesn’t count as a reward in my book.

In this gospel, we learn and grow line upon line, precept upon precept. There’s a spectrum of possibilities between God’s plan of free will and Satan’s plan of slavery. You can make a decision because you’re forced to--because you literally have no other choice. You can make a decision because you want to avoid being hurt--because you’re threatened with dire consequences if you choose otherwise. You can make a decision because you want to be rewarded. But there’s an even higher motivation. You can make a decision because it’s the right thing to do. Because you want to make the right decision. I believe one of the main reasons we’re here on this earth is to learn how to want to make the right decisions.

When you look at the way the church has grown from its inception until today, you’ll see definite trends. Trends away from fire and brimstone and toward charity never faileth. Trends away from promised punishments and toward promised rewards. Trends away from exclusion and toward inclusion. Does that mean the punishments for sin have been lessened? No. They’re still there, but hopefully we as church members no longer need the ever-present threat of eternal torment to get us motivated to do something. Although perhaps if I instituted a “Come to Elders Quorum activities or burn in hell” program, I’d see a bit more attendance. Food for thought.

“He that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming.” In the end, we can look at this scripture both ways. Yes, there is the foretold burning of the wicked that will happen at some point in the future. By making sacrifices and putting the Lord first, we avoid being in the charbroiled section that day, but by paying with a willing heart--by submitting our will to God--we gain the promised blessings. Peace. Love. Joy. In many ways, being forced to live without those rewards would be worse than any physical, passing torment we could endure. A few verses later in the same section my talk comes from, God reminds us of this important truth.

33 Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.

May we all be not weary in well doing is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Talk on Sunday

I'm giving a 20 minute talk in church on Sunday. That's the plan, at least. In practice, it's proving to be a bit harder to get this talk done than some I've done in the past, likely because the topic doesn't quite mesh up with my typical MO. Wanna know the topic?

"He that is tithed shall not be burned at his coming."*

Yeah.

Pay up or burn, baby! Bonus points to any of you out there who can make the connection between the picture for today's post and the topic. I'll give you one clue, even: Gandalf.

Anyway, I've already put in about five hours on the talk, and I'm about a third of the way there.

Because I didn't have enough to do already, clearly.

I'll make sure to post the talk in all its hellfire and damnation, pulpit-pounding glory. Probably on Monday. Unless the congregation kills me first. :-) If you want to be there for the performance, come on by. We meet at 9.

(*That's from Doctrine & Covenants 64:23, in case you were wondering. For you non-Mormons out there, don't go looking in your Bible for that one. It's in a collection of modern day revelations.)

Breadweavers

I'd like to take a moment off from my regularly scheduled cornucopia of movie and book reviews, writing observations, woodshed updates and dental complaints to tell you all about something The Wife is up to.

She's started a business.

Ever since I've known Denisa, she's wanted to be able to eat good, quality European bread as often as possible. We would go to bakery after bakery, bread store after bread store, in search of the best bread. Sometimes she found some (New York City, Panera), but it was never quite right for her. She's also been trying out recipe after recipe, tinkering with some, tossing out others, trying to get it down. Finally, about a year ago, she came across one that she liked quite a bit, and she used that as a base to start experimenting more.

Cut to today, when she's actually baking bread and selling it to other people, who are actually paying her money to do this. Check out her Facebook site for more information, including prices, types of bread for sale, and other info.

Her goal right now is to make enough money to get a new oven. If that goal comes through, she'd like a second fridge (to store all the dough she's got on hand for the bread. Speaking from experience, putting something away in our fridge these days is far more reminiscent of a game of Tetris than I'd like it to be). Right now, she's delivering bread to campus, but in a few weeks, she should also be selling bread in an actual store, as well. Orders have been quite plentiful so far, and there haven't been any complaints. She's got a certified kitchen, and very pleased with how well it's all going.

What do I have to do with this? Not a whole lot. I'm a cheerleader. I deliver the bread sometimes. I take some of the money. And I eat a lot of the product. I can vouch for it all, and I'm looking forward to new experiments on the horizon. Chocolate bread? Orange Roll Loaves? Bring it on. :-)

So head on over to Breadweavers and like the page. Order fifty loaves. I need that new refrigerator so I can put the milk away more easily. :-)

An Explanation of How the Internet Makes Money

I don't really have anything particular I want to blog about today, but this topic has been at the back of my mind for a while, so I thought I'd take the time on a slow news day to write about it.

The internet.

Well, not the internet in general, but more along the lines of "where the money comes from." Because right now, we all use the internet, pretty much for free. Yes, to get the service to your house costs money, but to use various sites online (Facebook, Youtube, Google, CNN, etc.) doesn't cost you a dime. Ever wondered why that is?

Well, wonder no more.

First off, let's make a distinction between people and corporations. People often do things for free. (This blog, for example, doesn't charge you to read it. Nice of me, huh?) Corporations, on the other hand, expect to be paid for what they do. When you buy a newspaper, the newspaper makes money. When you read one online, how does that work? It all comes down to advertising. Do a search in Google, and you see ads. Search in Youtube: you see ads. Check Facebook: ads. Read CNN: ads. Everywhere you go online, you see ads. Corporations charge companies for those ads, and that's what foots the bill of you seeing something for free.

It's not free--someone else just paid for it. Make sense?

Take my site for example. When I used to be on Livejournal, Livejournal would put ads up. All my readers would be exposed to those ads, and Livejournal would make money off each exposure. That's one of the reasons I switched to Blogger. Yes, there are still ads on my site, but now when someone looks at them, I get the money, not some corporation. (No doubt Blogger takes a cut, too--but at least they're sending some of that cold hard cash my way.)

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. Advertisers are all for paying for ads, but they really want people to actually go to their site or view their full offerings. That's why they pay even more for people who click on their ads. You viewing an ad on my site might net me somewhere along the lines of $0.000001. You clicking on that same ad? That might give me $0.50 (maybe even more--I'm not sure. People don't often click on the ads on my site, so I don't know what the average range is).

Naturally, advertisers don't want to shell out money for random clicks. There's such a thing called "click fraud," where someone pays people to click on ads a ton, thus theoretically making someone somewhere a lot of money. Go figure. You're also not supposed to click on your own ad links.

I always see rumors swirling around Facebook or other current free sites, saying that soon the site will start to charge money. As long as the site can make money from advertisers, this won't be the case. But there's technology out there that blocks ads on your browser, making it so that you don't have to view them--but of course, the sites you go to don't get money, either.

The good news here is that if you want to help the sites you like, you don't even have to really donate to them or buy what they're selling. All you have to do is keep going to their site. If you see an ad that looks interesting, click it. You don't need to buy what you clicked on--the site you like will still get the moola.

All of this actually ads up to pretty big sums. For example, for a while Bing was trying to get a piece of the ad market, trying to persuade Google users to come to them. As part of their strategy, they offered the Cashback program. If you went to Bing to search for an item to buy, and you bought that item after finding it in Bing, Bing would give you a percent of the item's cost back to you--anywhere from 1-8%. Sometimes more. So you could buy a television for $500 and get a check for $40 mailed to you from Bing. Yeah, I don't get how that all plays out, but my point is that advertising can ad up. (And sadly, the Cashback program is no longer living. It didn't work well enough--people still preferred to search through Google. How sad is that, when not even bribes can keep people away from a competitor's site?)

And that's all I have to say about how the internet makes money. Any questions?

Jar Jar Binks' Dialect: A Linguistic Look at the Gungan Language

Mesa Jar Jar Binks:
A Linguistic Look at the Gungan Language

 

Introduction

 

Who knew linguistics could be so much fun? This is the paper I wrote for English 323, the class that made me decide to add linguistics as a second major during my undergraduate years. The topic is perhaps a little out of the pop-culture limelight by now, but if you'll all recall, at the time there was quite the uproar over Jar Har and his ridiculous lines. Doing a simple linguistic analysis, I found there was a good reason for that furor: his dialectic is about as stupid as he is. Read on and find out why. (NOTE: This old paper of mine came to my attention recently, since someone emailed me out of the blue to say they'd created an online tool that transforms someone's written words into the Gungan Dialect. They used this paper as the basis for the rule set.)

Paper 

 

In the recent movie “Star Wars Episode One,” the character of Jar Jar Binks created much controversy and discussion. People either hated or loved him. One of the main reasons for this love/hate attitude is the peculiar Gungan dialect that Jar Jar speaks. Most people overlooked the fact that the Gungan dialect offers many examples of simple linguistic fundamentals such as phonological rules, word formations, and speech acts. A careful look at Jar Jar’s lines brings these points to light.

To begin it must be noted that the actor’s representation of Jar Jar’s speech often differs from Jar Jar’s lines in the original script. For example, in Jar Jar’s opening scene in the movie, he says “Oh boot it is! Tis demunded byda guds it is.” In the script, the lines goes as follows: “Oh boot tis! Tis demunded byda guds. Tis a live debett, tis” (16). Jar Jar’s dialect does not use the word “it” in the screenplay without shortening it or joining it to another word, but this example shows that the actor does not follow this rule in the movie. For purposes of regularity, the screenplay will be used as the authoritative source for the Gungan dialect.

Jar Jar often changes his speech in accordance with various phonological rules. First of all, progressive assimilation affects his speech. One good example of this is his tendency to change words ending in /Iŋ/ to instead end in /In/. “Nosir, nosir. Mesa hate crunchen. Dat’s da last ting mesa wanten” (50) /I/ is a high front lax unrounded vowel. Because /I/ is pronounced at the front of the mouth, /ŋ/, a velar nasal pronounced near the back of the mouth is assimilated and changed to /n/, an alveolar nasal that is pronounced at the front, as well. Segment deletion, the deletion of a sound, also plays a part. “Da speedest way tooda Naboo is goen through da core” (20). Here /spidiεst/ changes to /spidεst/, with the extra /i/ deleted completely from the word.

The Gungan dialect contains many examples of word formations. Compounding, the process by which two words are joined in order to form a new word, is very prevalent. “Maxibig” (22) refers to something very large and the “Nocomebackie law” (21) is just what it sounds like--a rule of banishment. Zero Derivation, using the same form of a word to mean different things, also functions as a word formation process in Jar Jar’s dialect. “Bombad” can mean both “good” (30), “bad” (114), and even is a title in the Gungan army--“Bombad General” (115). Outright coinage is present too. Such words as “bongo” (20), the word for a submarine; “Fambaa” (118), the word for the huge lizards that Gungans; and even “Gungan” itself are all coined words.

Jar Jar gives audiences examples of speech acts, both direct and indirect. “Mesa wonder why da guds invent pain,” (104) illustrates the concept of a performative verb. Just by declaring that he wonders, Jar Jar accomplishes that action. This is an example of a direct speech act, an act where the form has a direct relation to the function the sentence plays. By saying “ahh... any hep here would be hot,” (21) Jar Jar uses an indirect speech act. This sentence functions as a request for help, even though no question is actually asked. Its form does not relate directly to its function.

Jar Jar’s dialect itself offers an intriguing view into the inner workings of language. One of the dominant aspects of the Gungan dialect is its treatment of pronouns. We, I, and you are pronounced “wesa,” “mesa,” and “yousa,” while he and us are pronounced “hisens” and “uss-en.” Helping verbs such as “be” and “do” are usually replaced by these altered pronouns, as well. “Mesa Ja Ja Binkss” means “I am Jar Jar Binks,” and “Wesa no like the Naboo” means “We do not like the Naboo.” Ideally, rules such as these form the basis for a normal dialect.

However, Jar Jar’s dialect is not consistent. In the 33 times Jar Jar uses a word that means “I,” 24 times he uses “mesa,” but he uses “my” five times and leaves it as “I” four times. There is seemingly no pattern that he follows to determine his pronoun choice. “Me” is replaced with “my,” “mesa,” or just left “me.” His pronunciation is also haphazard. Sometimes /θ/ and /δ/ are replaced with /t/ and /d/ respectively such as in “tink” for “think” and “da” for “the.” However, Jar Jar says “without” and “them” normally. Jar Jar’s accent follows no rhyme or reason. For example, /i/ is pronounced as /e/ in some words (such as “spake” for “speak” (15) and “hair” for “here” (20)), but is unchanged in the prevalent “mesa” and “wesa” words. “The” is sometimes pronounced “der” (17) instead of the usual “da.”

All of these contradictions were written into the script. The actor then went on to alter many of the lines as he saw fit. The result is a dialect that often fails to follow the rules it is based on. At times, it seems to have no discernible rules at all. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Jar Jar’s character was both so disliked and so hard to understand by viewers. A naturally formed dialect follows consistent rules, even though those rules are often at odds with the standard dialect. Once these rules are understood, the listener can then clearly understand what the speaker is saying. If this pattern is not followed, confusion is the result. When creating Jar Jar’s lines, more care should have been taken to ensure that his dialect remained true to itself, but his dialect still serves to exemplify linguistic principles.

Bibliography

• Lucas, George. Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace Illustrated Screenplay. New York, NY: Del Rey, 1999.
  

Book Review: Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So I've now read Mockingjay, the finale to Suzanne Collin's Hunger Games series. What did I think? Well, I don't want to spoil any part of the book for those who haven't read it yet, but I think I'm safe saying this: I feel like the first book in the trilogy was jaw-droppingly fantastic. The concept is so easy to understand and so well executed. Young girl must kill other children in a fight to the death that's broadcast on national television. Oh yeah--and she doesn't want to kill anyone. The tension in that book is extreme, and it's a blast to read.

The other two books in the series are still good books, but they're just not at that same level. They start delving into other areas, areas where it's just not as believable to me that a young girl could make as big of a difference as Kat makes in these books. Plus, she starts turning into a pawn used by other people. Yes, she still sticks up for herself and makes her own decisions, but part of the greatness of the first book was that it was wholly believable to me that she'd be able to do what she did in that book. The "rules" were very clearly defined, and she played according to those rules, and won.

The rules in the second two books got much blurrier. "Winning" became much more relative. Does that make the books worse? Not on its own, but because those same rules were what made the first book so great, the loss of them removes that potential for greatness, in my opinion.

So the final two books are still very good, but they're just as good as other dystopian sci-fi YA novels. Not nearly as memorable as The Hunger Games. Would I recommend them? Certainly. I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout them

Just keep those expectations in check.

View all my reviews

Movie Review: The Hurt Locker

I know--it took me long enough to get around to reviewing last year's best picture winner. Well, sorry. Life's busy--what can I say? For those of you who don't remember, this was the film that aced out Avatar for best picture, pitting a former husband and wife against each other in many different categories. So the important question first: was it actually better than Avatar?

Easily.

But that's not exactly difficult, all things considered. I mean, Avatar was basically Dances with Smurfs, in 3D. It was an effects-driven movie. The effects were awesome. The plot? Not so much. So really, it would have been surprising (and disappointing) to me if Avatar had won best picture. Is Hurt Locker more enjoyable?

Not hardly.

It's a real downer of a movie, folks. It's about a soldier over in Iraq who disarms bombs. It does a fantastic job of portraying how brutal and stressful things must have been/are over there right now, but you won't exactly be whistling Zipahdee-doo-dah once the credits start rolling. It's more than capably told, very well acted, has an intriguing plot . . .

And it just left me kind of lukewarm. Three stars for me. I think this is because the characters in the movie are all so detached, it's hard to really get engaged with them. They're all emotionally scarred, so you don't really want to invest in them, fearing you'll get burned before the movie's through.

That said, it's a thinking movie, and I do recommend it if you're in the right mood. Can't help but feel disappointed, however. Any of you see it? Care to contradict me?

Wednesday Craziness

It's Wednesday, which means a whole lotta crazy for me. I headed out the door at 7:10, and I'm booked straight through until 10:00pm. Oil change, class, tech training, wiki presentation, parent/teacher night, class, Elders Quorum presidency meeting, writing group. Eating is in there somewhere, too. I worked on the woodshed another three and a half hours yesterday, but didn't make a whole lot of progress, since I discovered most of what I'd done before on the rafters was done incorrectly. Sigh. Not a good feeling.


It's at times like these that I wish I had a time bank, where I could store some time when I was bored, then use it now when I needed it. Science, I demand you come up with something like that. Now!

Woodshed Update

I know you're all wondering just how my woodshed is going. Well wonder no more. I managed to get quite a bit done on it over the weekend, and I now have the five rafters up, three pillars, both headers, support braces . . . it's coming along very well. Is it perfect? Unfortunately, no. I've decided that no matter how smart you are or how much education you have, all you need to do is try to do something well outside your skill set to discover just how incompetent you really can be. While this does wonders for one's confidence at one's day job, it doesn't make the woodshed any better. :-)

Case in point: I keep on forgetting to keep the boards pressed tightly together before I nail them in place. (Or maybe it's just that they keep coming separated while I nail--a second set of hands at all times would really be helpful.) Yesterday it took me a good twenty minutes to redo a simple nailing job, just because I'd screwed it up so badly the first time. Denisa comes out and she can't see anything wrong, so I suppose there's a chance I'm just being overly critical of my own work, but still . . .

That said, I'm really enjoying this process, and I'm still very glad I didn't hire it out for someone else to do. Yes, my forearms are killing me from nailing 20 penny nails into support beams all day yesterday, and yes, there have been times of great frustration, but it's immensely satisfying to take a step back now and then and look at what progress I've made. Where a few days ago there was nothing, now there is something clearly identifiable as a lean to. Plus, the work is so different from everything else I do, that it makes everything else I do new again for some reason. It's refreshing.

Unfortunately, I'm looking ahead at my schedule, and I won't have as many days to work on it this week as I'd like. Campus dinners, writing group, presidency meeting, masters classes--I'm a busy boy. Still, it's looking likely that I'll get it done before snow, and that was something I'd been really worried about just last week.

Wish me luck!