My Life (except for all the boy stuff)

I haven't seen it yet, but my dad won movie tickets at a pie-eating contest, so I think I will soon.

Oh, and I don't look like Alexis Bledel either. Nope, not even close. My sister holds the Alexis-Bledel–clone title in our family; she's got the dimple in her chin and everything. The only person who's ever told me I looked like a celebrity was that elder who said I looked like Kirsten Dunst, which is just insulting.

P.P.S. I do, however, have abnormally cold feet.

Why I am the way that I am.

My sister's friend's sister posted this picture of my sister on facebook with a caption:

the most gorgeous, beautiful, outstanding, spectacular, amazing, lovely, extraordinary, glamorous, smart, tactful, punctual, awesome, royal, cozy, talented, photogenic, astounding, fantastic, incredible, marvelous, miraculous, phenomenal, fabulous, prodigious, unbelievable, wonderful, sexy, magical, furry, stupendous, delicious, polite, astonishing, elite, mesmerizing, remarkable, and graceful person in the whole world.

yess it is all true.

And I have to live with her! Pity, please.

The NRA is just acting silly.

  Okay, so this morning I was reading my dad's NRA magazine because I was bored, and I saw yet another protest against gun registration. The argument is something we learned in high school English to avoid—the slippery slope: If guns are registered, then the government is going to start persecuting the owners of registered guns, then the government will take them away, then only criminals will have guns, and then all hell will break loose.
  We register cars, boats, motorcycles, bicycles, trailers, dogs, cats, burial sites, mobile homes, hairstylists, egg handlers, drivers, voters, wild animals kept as pets, Accutane users, ADHD-medication users, marriages, births, deaths, day care centers, pesticides for your own home, Sudafed, backyard fires, kennels, pet food manufacturers, people who want to leave the country, taxis, rented rooms, garden sheds, home businesses, commercial weights and measures, ATVs, snowmobiles, food handlers, minors who want to work, professional kickboxers, and lots more crazy stuff. There is no reason why guns should not be on this list. In fact, it makes a lot more sense to register guns than it does to register cats.
  In fact, that guns aren't registered, when all this other stuff is, tends to suggest that the NRA is much, much stronger than the "anti-gunners" they're so worried about. Which means that the victim position it takes is a little silly.
  For example, this month the magazine said that NRA members have been defined as terrorists and may be prosecuted by "a few secret bureaucrats" (James O. E. Norell, "Are You an American[,] or Are You a Terrorist?" America's First Freedom, September 2009, 31) if Senate bill 1317 passes: "This is about freedom-loving Americans being transformed by a stealth process into felons. It involves secret lists created with secret dossiers" (32). The first thing Norell does is assume, after the first two paragraphs, that the bill has already passed, filling the average reader with terror that any day now they'll be snatched from their house in the middle of the night and accused "ex-parte and in camera" of violating "a set of police-state rules worthy of Iran, Cuba or North Korea" (33; italics original). He also waits until the very last page of his article, which is in another part of the magazine altogether, to mention that one of his key sources of gun-owner persecution—a DHS report called "Rightwing Extremism"—was actually withdrawn after veterans and gun owners complained about it (57). So it's not quite as exciting as it seems.
  Another strange bit is when Norell refutes the Brady Center's charges that "the National Rifle Association [has] for years employed inflammatory extremist and anti-government rhetoric" (31; emphasis added by Norell) and then goes on for four pages about how "the feds" will "secretly . . . add you to their 'terrorist' list" (32). He even equates "gun owners, the NRA and people who disagree with their government" (33), assuming that all gun owners disagree with their government. He doesn't qualify how they disagree with their government, positing that they disagree with everything about the broadly defined government. That sounds just a little anti-government it me.
  All this Us versus Them stuff is all very exciting in a nerds-who-resent-football-players way, but it's hardly constructive when you're trying to influence policy. For example, another article assumes that by the 2012 election, the NRA will definitely oppose Obama (Dave Kopel, "Will the Supreme Court Set Speech Free?" America's First Freedom, September 2009, 29). If I were Obama, that wouldn't be much incentive to do anything for the NRA. Politicians like to look good and make people like them (it's why they're politicians), and if you make it clear that you will never, ever approve of anything they ever do, they tend not to work with you. They even start to point out your flaws to protect themselves from the mudslinging you're doing. Furthermore, on the heels of the Heller decision and a Rasmussen survey which found that 75% of Americans "believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right of a law-abiding citizen to own a firearm" (reported in America's First Freedom, September 2009, 16), it's just a little silly.

Mission Triumph!

Isidro called yesterday—his wife and 16-year-old son joined the Church in México! He told me all about how his son's already been on a youth temple trip to the Mexico City Temple and gone to youth conference. Isidro is so happy! I'm so happy! Isidro also said he's a ward missionary and he'll get the Melchizedek priesthood next month! Wow! He's just amazing!

Freaky/Cool Miracles

Yesterday I was praying really hard that I would find my visiting teachee at church and that I could get in touch with the other visiting teachee who I had a really strong feeling (i.e. Holy Ghost impression) didn't even live here. Both happened pretty easily, so that was cool.
The freaky/cool part happened when the bishop set me apart as a ward missionary. One minute he was talking about how I would find people to teach the gospel to, yadda, yadda, and the next moment he was quoting my patriarchal blessing! Specifically he quoted and reemphasized the part that's really pretty unusual and also pertinent to my time of life. Lately I had been wondering if the patriarch had misspoken. I guess not because the bishop just said the same exact thing.

Okay, so I finally read it.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that great idea you wish you'd had. At every page turn and every new description of ultraviolent gore, you marvel at Seth Grahame-Smith's editor's genius and wonder how he got to be so darn smart. Elizabeth Bennett is transformed from a self-confident young gentlewoman with a taste for the absurd to a self-confident young martial artist with a taste for the absurd and for human hearts. (That was zeugma, did you notice?) Charlotte Lucas Collins becomes one of the sadly stricken, Darcy a zombie-slayer, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh a vengeful old hag with superior Katana powers. Everything else is basically the same. I guess Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is coming out soon, but you can't forget your first bite!

Eight Years

That's all that stands between me and obsolescence.
As I gaze at the octad of fat chonologious beads strung out in front of me,
I realize that nothing, not even death,
is as painful as keeping in touch with people with whom you no longer have anything in common.

Blessings still happen even when you aren't a missionary

Yesterday I fasted for God to help me deal with the no-job, bored-as-heck semidepression situation. Then at testimony meeting, a returned missionary who gave his homecoming talk my first week in the YSA ward—who coincidentally came home the same week I did—bore his testimony. He talked about how he's been struggling with having no job and nothing to do (unemployment's at 12.4% in our area, and that doesn't even count returned missionaries). He said he's been feeling really depressed, and recently he started going to the bookstore to read books for a couple hours and then leave. This week in the bookstore he saw a man out of the corner of his eye who looked familiar, but he kept walking because he really didn't feel like talking to anybody. The Spirit ordered him to turn around and talk to the guy, so he did. He was one of the people who invited the returned missionary to his house to listen to the missionary lessons four years ago before the returned missionary was baptized! Now the man is covered in piercings and says he doesn't go to church anymore. The returned missionary bore his testimony to the man and told him to come to church, piercings and all. The returned missionary felt a new purpose and lost the depression that had been plaguing him for the past two and a half months.
This testimony was an answer to my fasting and prayer. I went up to the returned missionary to thank him for bearing his testimony, and he kind of blew me off. Oh, well, the testimony still stands.