California often gives me reasons to be proud, but this one may be a contender for the upper echelon of awesome:
California welfare cards can be used in many casino ATMs
Times review finds that in more than half of the state’s casinos and gaming rooms, welfare recipients can get cash from state-issued EBT cards. Officials say they’re moving to block such transactions.
This reminds me a little bit of stories I’ve always heard about students at BYU using their “Dining Plus” cards for basically anything they wanted on campus.
After signing a piece of evil legislation bill requiring Arizona police officers to determine whether people are in the country legally, the governor of Arizona said she’s requiring training for said police officers.
“This training will include what does and does not constitute reasonable suspicion that a person is not legally present in the United States…Racial profiling is illegal. It is illegal in America, and it’s certainly illegal in Arizona.”
-Arizona Governor Jan Brewer
Training? Training will stop racism racial profiling dead in its tracks?
This is life for fans from small-time schools like Utah State University without the resources, the tradition, or the sexiness required to obtain the recruits, sponsors, media attention, or in many cases, simply the confidence that enable teams to rise above the haze into that elite class of schools with a legitimate shot at glory. Read more…
I learned at Stake Priesthood leadership meeting that we can increase our spirituality by gleaning insights from the biographies of BYU football players.
I also learned that you shouldn’t make gagging noises during Stake Priesthood leadership meeting if the bishop is sitting behind you.
Yes, it is that time of year. Despite all of my principles and the excellent training my parents provided me with as a child, I will spend the next few weeks of my life cheering for BYU.
(Vomit)
As is so often the case, Utah State’s basketball team emerged victorious in their early-season matchup with BYU–the final margin was only 10 points, but having watched the game, it wasn’t that close. On that early December evening, there was no question who the better team was by the time the final buzzer sounded, and the previously-undefeated Cougars walked off the court in sorrow and BYU fans immediately began littering Facebook with explanations and apologies for why the Cougars lost.
(This is in keeping with BYU Fan Rule #1: No BYU fan shall ever admit that any athletic team representing BYU on the field of competition, has been defeated fairly or was outplayed by a superior opponent. All losses shall be attributed to a) poor officiating, b) untimely injuries to key players, or c) dirty play on the part of the opponents.) Read more…
A few observations as I near the midpoint of my trip in Finland:
1. I have flown to Finland 5 times in my life, and my luggage has been lost or screwed up on 3 of those occasions. This was the first time it happened in the middle of a freezing-butt cold stretch in Winter.
2. This is the first time I have returned to Finland since my mission where I have not been asked to speak in church. I am very grateful for this.
3. Sauna is even better than I remember.
4. Cigarette smoke stench on old people in Finland is different than cigarette stench on old people in the US. It has a slightly more stale and bitter twist to it, but less overpowering. I remember noticing this 10 years ago, but had forgotten.
6. Finland is beautiful when there is a fresh blanket of snow on the ground in the midst of the winter darkness that otherwise seems so all-encompassing and impenetrable.
7. There are several things that make a trip to Finland completely worth it–even when it’s been below freezing every minute of my time here: Valio’s Banana yogurt, watching children sing the Tip-Tap Tip-Tap song before Santa Claus comes, candlelit cemeteries on Christmas, and Budapests.
Unknown to most readers at BCC, there has been a significant effort behind the scenes to reboot the once-proud Zeitcast–BCC’s podcast, in which a handful of permabloggers shoot the bull over the Interwebs about topics Mormon or otherwise. Unfortunately, each and every attempt up to this point has failed, with the grandest and most epic of failures coming last night.
Failure #1:
My first attempt at a podcast! Just before Halloween, Steve Evans, John C, and I discussed Halloween candy, Trunk-or-Treats, and a Book of Mormon-based novel that John found in his local library. After recording, I discover that the software I was using to record (Audacity) has multiple input settings, and that I had chosen the wrong one. Thus, I had recorded 15 minutes of silence. Steve mocks me harshly, and exaggerates the length of time we were recording before I caught my mistake to anyone who will listen.
Failure #2:
Another pre-Halloween attempt, in which Steve Evans, Guest Kyle M, and I fail to launch on account of Steve’s struggles with his recent installation of Windows 7 and Audacity’s compatibility with it. Of course, we don’t realize that his software has failed until we have been talking for 35 minutes or so about a variety of topics, including Halloween, Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites, and other minutiae. I feel poetically smug as Steve tries to reconcile his mockery of me the week before with his own foul up. Read more…
I had the temerity to raise my hand in Elders Quorum last Sunday and ask if anyone was interested in putting together a Turkey Bowl on Thanksgiving Day, and so was naturally put in charge of the event. I forgot about this responsibility almost as soon as it was given to me (in keeping with my General Theory of Elders Quorum Responsibility Forgetfulness), and didn’t give it another thought until Tuesday afternoon when I got an email from someone in the EQ asking about the game and if anyone was planning on playing. Repenting of my sloth, I drafted a note about the game and sent it to the EQ email list.
By the time the game was supposed to start–yesterday morning at 8:30am–it was clear that the number of hands who had expressed interest in playing was a gross overstatement of the number of people who were actually willing to show up and toss around the pigskin. We waited 30 minutes or so past the scheduled starting time, and finally managed to scrounge up 6 players, myself included. We all stretched out, the hardcore footballers put on their cleats, and we staked out a shortened field since our numbers were so few, and no one really wanted to run much anyway.
Thus went the Harbor Hills Ward Elders Quorum Turkey Bowl 2009: The Armpit of All Turkey Bowls: Read more…
I just posted over at By Common Consent, and recounted part of the story about how I came to blog at BCC, which happened to coincide with my decision to shut this blog down (which, as you can see, I have reversed directions on a few times). It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since I was running out of steam with this blog and struggling to hang on in the wake of the political season of 2008. I am very glad that Sister Blah 2 happened to follow a link from some random comment on a blog I don’t even recall and landed on this website, and eventually invited me to guest post at BCC–if that invitation had come just a few weeks later, it would likely have gone to a dead end email address that I stopped checking when I turned the lights out on blogging.
Mormons may be accused of herd mentality, and they may be guilty of it from time to time, but my Bishop is determined to break that stereotype.
Since I moved into my ward over three years ago, I have observed an interesting phenomenon. Every Sunday during opening Priesthood exercises, which are held in the gym, all the men stand in the exact same formation–we form a perfect half-arc around the 3-point line on the basketball court. No one stands inside the 3 point line except the Bishop, who stands directly below the hoop.
Well, last Sunday, my Bishop put an end to it, and made us all take five big steps in toward him. The awkward tension in the room was palpable–kind of like asking 50 families who have been sitting on the same pew for 20 years to find a different pew, all at the same time.
2:10 pm.
After about a dozen wrong turns around the Disneyland resort, my buddy Jeff and I finally found the espn zone where the event is being held. We picked a cool two hours early, not knowing how many people would be here, given that it’s the only signing inall of socal.
2:18pm.
We just got in line, and it would appear that we guessed right–there are only about 15 people ahead of me in line, and suddenly lots of folks are lining up behind us.
220pm.
My buddy Jeff mentions that he hopes the person in the front of the line knows what he’s doing. That would be hilarious if we are all lined up behind a guy who just needed a place to sit for a while, but has no actual connection to the event.
225pm.
Suddenly the fact that I am going stand here for two hours sets in. Everyone else is mostly sitting on the pavement reading copies of their books.
I am wearing some new pants, and I refuse. Read more…
I like how Andrew Sullivan approaches it, though I am a Mormon and naturally prefer sympathetic takes to cynical ones (Another from him here).
Most of all, for me, this is just a welcome step away from 2008, during which I constantly was struggling with my active role in the campaign and passage of Proposition 8 in California. My loyalty to the Church and my testimony of the Prophet are strong, but my heart is tired of hurting on this one. So, for a day, I celebrate this breather.
I am doing a first today–I will be attending a book signing Bill Simmons is holding at Disneyland to promote his new book, The Book of Basketball. I am utterly ignorant as to how a person is supposed to behave at such an event, but from reading Simmons’ article on ESPN.com the other day regarding earlier book tour stops, I can infer that asking him to sign my chest is not likely to be considered appropriate. Read more…
Okay, now this is just pathetic. I promised to get things going again on this blog, but so far I have done essentially zilch to that end. Truth is, I am kind of going through a burned out phase at BCC, too–nothing permanent, but just a seeming inability to find anything creative to say about my religious life these days.
In any case, I was reminded today of a few old posts on this blog and it suddenly hit me how much I love this blog, and much I wish I was still posting to it.
Growing up, my Dad frequently told me, after I had talked back to him disrespectfully or just because I was an idiot, that one day, my mouth would “get me in trouble.” I never really believed him, but in fact, he was right. Last week, I wrote a post for By Common Consent that ended up being kind of a humorous turn on some of the unintentionally horrible things that we all do in our younger years. The post itself, as I just said, was kind of funny, and that was by design, but when the original idea behind the post was more serious–the idea that it’s difficult to understand the cruelty that we all exhibit from time to time. Read more…
My wife and kids left last Saturday morning for a 5-day trip to see my folks in Idaho. Being the sort of person who enjoys some alone time, I expected that this would be a period of great personal reflection, goal-setting, and progress in areas I’ve neglected in favor of family obligations.
Instead, I’ve slept. A lot.
Saturday, I slept in until just after 1pm. Sunday, I got up just in time to make it to Sacrament meeting at 9am, and then slept–more or less–the rest of the day. Monday, I slept in until 9am, and made it to work around 10-ish. Today, slept until almost 10, and finally walked into my office just shy of 11am. And mind you–I have been in bed with the lights out before 11:15pm every night.
Please pardon the seemingly endless starting-up sort of posts; it’s taking me some time to figure what is going on. While my decision to start posting here again was actually a long, thought-out decision, it was based almost entirely on the simple idea that I just wanted my old blog back, and not based on any actual conceptualization of how I would go about writing here again. More specifically, the principle reason I shut it down in the first place is still relevant: too little time and too many other responsibilities. So I need to make it clear to myself why exactly I am doing this, or at least what this re-opening is not supposed to imply. In no particular order… Read more…
I don’t really know how to start this blog up again after taking several months off. I suppose this could be the time to re-invent myself, pretend the old stuff never existed, and just literally start over, but it could also be easier to just pretend that the past three or four months never happened and pick up where I left off. Read more…
I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this post for nearly a week, but every time I start, the text begins to reflect a level of self-seriousness and narcissism that I can’t stand in myself and am forced to delete it all and start over. So I’ll just get to the point:
I’d like to bear my testimony, that I know this blog is true, but I’m still going to kill it right now. Seriously.
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