Nancy's Musings

Thinking is hard. I actually considered leaving that as the entire post, because I'm having a bad brain day, and that would illustrate it pretty well. But I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm giving up just because something is difficult. I struggle with academic thinking. My biggest problem seems to be finding my way to an argument. I have a few friends who think that's scoff-worthy, because they write arguments in their sleep. However, my logic circuits work well enough to understand that being good at something doesn't give you any leverage to make fun of somebody who isn't good at it. Writing an argument is more than just thinking. It's vulnerable and risky. Writing an argument is like growing a toe out of your shoulder and then wearing cap sleeves. Everybody knows it's wrong, even you, but you grow the thing first, and then you can graft it where it really goes. You're breaking a long-established pattern, and there's nob...

I love vivid and lucid dreaming: they're side effects of my superpowers. A common theme in my dreams are elevators: I dream about them when my brain has something to say about my career, when I think I have one. The library elevator, for instance, is a plate of glass suspended by wires that connected to a single wire overhead. Several of us ride that elevator at the time, clinging to the cables, not speaking to each other. We are silent with fear. The elevator has no shaft, it just moves up and down without reason or command from floor to floor through empty blackness, and you leap on and off when you can. It is so dark. Just books and blackness, steel and glass. Hospital elevators are narrow and a nasty shade of mustard yellow. They're boxy and vinyl, and a great place to hide from the man with the gun. They do not go all the way up or down, and I have to run down a hallway to transfer to an identical elevator to get anywhere. They go several floors underground, but do n...

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...