Gently reconnecting my head to my body

So I recently returned from a trip home to see the familial bosom and hang out with my sister and the rest of my family. My mind is still racing. Here's what I like about Utah: Here's what I don't like about Utah: I have a lot to say about the state of cancer, the state of my family and the state of Utah. But I think I'll sit back until I'm less frustrated and overwhelmed. Glad to be home, though. Yes indeedy.

Interview Pass it On by The Jason Show!

(like a me-me, but different!)

Have I mentioned The Jason Show before?

I should have. I found his blog via Bossy a few months ago, right around the whole Prop 8 debacle and very soon after I found my friend Chris' Gay Mormon Teen Torment letters in my garage.

Jason is an easy-to-lurv ex-Mormon with a touching personal story that has always particularly spoken to me given our matchy-matchy upbringings in the bosom of Vatican City, Mormonville, USA. As far as I know, we never met, but we COULD have...

Today I'm participating in Mr. Show's Interview Pass Along...skip to the end if you don't want to hear about me, but DO want to be interviewed your own sassy self!

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you ask them five (different) questions.

1. How old do you wish you were and why?

Huh. Sometimes I think I'd like to be 25 again and go whisper some truths into my own ear. But I think I'm talking about time travel... What was the question? Anyway, if I WERE 25 again, I'm sure Mistakes Made would be Mistakes Remade. I'm pretty happy being 38 as is, because the sweet things in my life far outweigh the problems I could have corrected with my fabulous hindsight.

2. If you found yourself, entirely by accident, on a nudist beach, would you go native?

Sure. I would and I have, but maybe not if all the other nudists were my co-workers or my parents.

3. You're 15 (or whatever) and the world's about to end. Is dying a virgin really the thing that concerns you most?

Whaa-aaaa-at? I'm so confused. WHEN I was 15, my preoccupation with virginity wasn't all that powerful (17, yes, maybe...probably). If I was a virgin and my own 38-year-old-self simultaneously, I might wish I'd made a few more lascivious choices. But wait...the world is about to end? I'd want to hold on tightly to the people I love and comfort them. I think at any age that would have outweighed getting it on.

4. Why do you find yourself coming back for more and more of The Jason Show?

Because Jason is so endearing, of course.

5. Why did you leave Mormonism?

Because...oh, 5000 things. Because Mormons kept telling me things that didn't jive with my own experiences and observations. Because I never REALLY felt any burning bosom or still small voice, just my own brain sometimes appreciating their small truths, and more often not. Brown skin is a curse from God? Men get Priesthood, Women get Motherhood? Casseroles and jell-o taste good? Celestial Marriage? Relief Society? Popcorn popping on the Apricot Tree? The planet Kolob??!? But mainly, I probably left when and how I did because I was supposed to BELIEVE, not just coast along pretending. My father was a Bishop and my entire family was UBER Mormon. Up at 5 AM reading the D&C before breakfast every day, my whole life. Scripture games at the dinner table. Kneeling-down family prayers at least twice daily. We were supposed to REALLY FEEL it. Tesimony x 1000. So when I wasn't feeling it, I couldn't just let that be my answer. I tried. But it felt less and less true. The more I dug, the more it stank. A lot contributed to my realization that I didn't believe in Mormonism or (eventually) religion in general, but once my blinders came off, Mormonism in particular seemed like a farce. Ahem.

So...wanna be interviewed? Wanna submit interview questions for others? Comment me!

Welcome to your post-apocalypse

So I finally saw the movie wall-E. And I've been thinking about how it fits in the lexicon of children's film and fiction. Which it so doesn't. I mean...stripped down, this is a movie about garbage, dystopia and solitude. Everything potentially familiar to children like cities, roads, houses, humans, and toys have disappeared, been covered with waste, or converted into square garbage-based-building-blocks. There is no greenery anywhere and it's pretty heavy-handedly explained that the familiar world has been destroyed by short-sighted human consumption. Human beings, meanwhile, have turned into amorphous, futuristic-wheelless-chair-bound, disconnected blobs living on a space outpost. They perpetually use Facebook and shop using the digital screens attached to their wheelfree-chairs. And drink Big Gulps. Human babies live in incubators tended to by robots. Only wall-E displays anything like a familiar "humanity" or a childlike interest in the world around him. If this were not animated, it would be the bleakest, grossest, saddest movie of the year. wall-E lives in a battered bunker, his playthings are beloved, muck-covered cast-offs, and he comforts himself by singing along to grainy videos of Hello Dolly and cuddling his pet cockroach. Then he goes to space and uncovers a plot to keep the blobs away from earth forever because the garbage problem is unsolvable. And he finds love. With another robot. Who is 800 years younger than him. So, as plots go, you know, GLARGH! When I was growing up, I remember my first glimpses of dystopian society: Logan's Run. Planet of the Apes. Westworld. What strikes me is that I was frequently drawn to dystopian film and literature because it was so completely opposite from my own childhood. The order and straightforwardness of my world made these films ludicrous and therefore enjoyable. Although my family believed in a pending religious apocalypse, it was clear there wasn't much concrete about that. Jesus rising in the East like the sun? 1000 years of war? 2 years of food will keep us safe? Oh...kay. I wonder what my kids think about this movie. It's almost impossible to chat with them about the grimmer aspects, and they both think wall-E is cute. Which he is. Scarred little freak. What do you think? Is wall-E part of the Soilent Green lexicon, or more Bugs Life? Did you see it? Did you like it?