Nancy's Musings

Thursday, I was the victim of a crime. It's not the kind of crime that can be prosecuted. At all. I get to be a victim again! Yay! *sarcasm* It's a phone scam: they call you (usually from another country, like Jamaica, although this man sounded Indian) and pretend to be from the IRS (he also claimed to be an agent of FBI [sic]) and that you owe the government money. They ask you to pay over the phone. There are so many SO MANY clues that the phone call is fraudulent. The man I spoke with actually pretended to be somebody else for a few moments. With an even sillier accent. They're reading a script. They cannot prove their authority. They claim impossible things. But unless you hang up immediately (or screen your calls, like I'll have to do now), it can be difficult to process all of those clues into a coherent rejection. I absolutely understand why people would give in to that kind of fraud. And to everyone who falls for it, I want to personally issue a long, warm...

I moved into the dorms at the University of Utah for my first year. They moved me down to the old dorms for the olympics, then I moved back home for the summer. I moved to Bonn the year after that. Then Duesseldorf, then Kaiserslautern, then six months in Muehlheim a.M. then back home until my last semesters back in the dorms at the University of Utah (the first dorm they assigned me was with really irresponsible Freshmen, so I asked them to move me to grad student dorms, which worked MUCH BETTER). I moved down to Provo for my summer semester, and lived in my brother's townhome while he was in Michigan for an internship. After I finished classes and my brother and family moved back, I moved to another house in a nearby neighborhood with my sister, but moved into a third house in Provo when a cheaper room became available. Then I moved home again to save money for grad school. I moved away to grad school in Virginia, but the first room I found in Fairfax, though convenient to the ...

I'm single. How happy am I allowed to be? The Case for Misery: "Wickedness never was happiness." - Scripture Morality and Doctrine are the supporting premises behind this case. People who propone these arguments often do not realize that they are demanding unhappiness from many different kinds of people whose lives they are not used to acknowledging. But so it goes. The Doctrinal case for misery begins with the doctrine of eternal marriage. In mormon theology, the highest degree of "glory" (not necessarily "happiness," although there may be a connection) in the afterlife is only available to those who have obtained an eternal marriage - to those who have been sealed to a spouse of the appropriate gender - in this life, or by proxy. The "by proxy" clause isn't explicit in scripture, and the stipulation that marriage is strictly a "before the final judgment" thing IS explicit in all scripture, up to and including revelation...

From the time I was very little, my father constantly shared his favorite scripture. I don't know it word for word (he often misquoted it), but it's from 1 Samuel (15:22). And Samuel said, Hath the  Lord   as great   delight  in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the  voice  of the  Lord ? Behold, to  obey   is  better than  sacrifice ,  and  to hearken than the fat of  rams . The point of the verse is that the Lord values strict obedience over flashy repentance. We've all heard the common aphorism "it's easier to receive forgiveness than permission" (I, for instance, heard it from the same dad who misquotes Samuel). It might be easier, but it is not the same to God. In this instance, disobedience (despite flashy repentance) had serious and permanent consequences for Saul. So I go to church. A lot. I probably enjoy it more than most people. I want to learn more about the Savior, and to strengthen and ...

A friend recently warned me to give as little credence to slander as I do to flattery, and I'm taking that advice very seriously for reasons of logic: nobody who tells you what they claim to really think of you is disinterested, whether what they say is positive or negative. It reminded me that in film studies, the films we categorize as "realism" are actually unusually miserable. But misery is somehow automatically more "real" or believable than happiness. And sometimes it's easier to believe I'm a bitch than to believe I'm Batman: that poor, misunderstood vigilante. Recently, due to a depression trigger (and environmental factors), I have been keeping very silent about what's going on in my head. I mean, it'll clear up soon. It'll be bright as the weather, and all will be well. I mean, I guess that's what this blog is for. I have lots of things I want to say, and as the song says, "I could go on, and on, and on, but who c...

After years of frustration as I think of gender, modes of gender definition, and how the modes interact, I think I may finally have come to some conclusions and I hope that if you read what I think I think, you'll be patient and keep my purpose in mind, which is to arrive at a "working" truth - a paradigm by which I can have and spread peace. I have encountered three modes of gender definition, and it isn't always easy to tell them apart. The first mode is the common-culture mode I encountered in public school that divides maturing children carefully into "male" and "female," prescribing and attributing behaviors to each, and punishing transgression with bullying, and descriptors like "tomboy" and "sissy." The policing of gendered behaviors continues for most people well into adulthood, and these divisions can sometimes seem arbitrary when you stand on the wrong side of them (a man who likes the convenience of carrying a hand...

Words are kind of funny. I think they're an amazing way to communicate, I mean giving sound combinations meaning. . . it's a cool thing. But (I think) because ideas in our heads are so close to and influential of our central identities, when we are tasked with interpreting somebody else's words, they can shift our ideas in ways that question our identities, or make us feel pain or at least discomfort. This is not new for most of us: we're always meeting with ideas that make us uncomfortable, whether that's the near-porn of alcohol commercials, or vitriol against a protected class, or even well-meant criticism. The discomfort of strangeness is a commonplace. I think each person creates a pattern for meeting and dealing with other peoples' ideas, and I think this pattern can vary along a vast spectrum from "if I didn't have the thought, then it must be wrong" to utter boredom with any thought that comes around a second time. I know people who w...