It's that time again...

1. Go camping at least six times this year.

2. Get a 4.0 gpa this year.

3. Volunteer more often, whether it be at community radio, the library, or Habitat for Humanity. Preferably all three, or some other combination of the above.

4. Finish my card game to a point where I can pitch and present it to various interested companies, people, organizations, etc.

5. Finish three plays and submit them to New Play Project.

6. Get published in something more prestigious than the Daily Universe – twice! This means two different publications, not two articles in one publication.

7. Learn Tai Chi and establish a daily yoga practice.

8. Be at a healthy BMI of 24.

9. Attend the following: A Jewish passover/seder, a Catholic mass, a Protestant bible study, a Buddhist meditation session, a Hindu festival, an LDS conference, an anime convention, a farmer’s market, a book reading, a museum exhibit, a live show (music), a live show (theatre), a live show (dance).

10. Set up free English classes for minority immigrants in the Seattle area, possibly working with LDS missionaries.

Well, the solar calendar New Year is almost upon us (while officially recognizing the lunar one, I will still celebrate the solar one if only to fit in with the rest of the crowd), which means it’s time to dust off the resolutions for 2009 and see how I did. Admittedly, I thought I was off to a good start in the beginning of this year because while my blog was still on Blogspot, I placed them up on the sidebar as a reminder for me (as well as publicly humiliating myself for additional motivation). Unfortunately, we left Blogspot in may, and I never reposted them on this blog’s sidebar. A shame.

In fact, I thought this WordPress blog was at least a year old – alas! I was wrong. So I dug up my old Blogpost resolutions and have done a quick post-game analysis on the past year. My answers, I’ve decided, will be brutally honest, even if it sucks. The New Year should be about shedding old baggage so that the new baggage for the next year won’t destroy you completely – only partially. And a lot of these post-game analyses are…well, complicated. This year I  hyped up for myself because it was the Year of the Ox – my year. But this year, rather than being prosperous and full of awesome, was more tumultuous and exhausting. Each resolution is followed first with the numbers (what everyone really wants to know) and the excruciating in-depth analysis that follows:

1. Go overnight camping at least 12 times this year.
Current total: 0

This resolution was supposed to revitalize my love for the outdoors, which resembles more the smoldering embers of a dying flame rather than the raging bonfire I wish it was. Camping this year was a bust. However, lest anyone think I didn’t do anything outdoors, this simply is not true. For a while, Dantzel and I tried to go hiking every weekend in the summer. This lasted no more than a month, but we did manage to find some true gems out in the Utah desert. Could we have done more? Yes. Do I regret not completing this resolution? Absolutely. Are there lessons I will take with me to the next year? Of course! First and foremost being finding people who are enthused about camping – when you and your wife have no friends who show anything more than lukewarm interest in going camping in the first place, it can be hard to feel motivated.

2. Watch two plays at the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, UT.
Current total: 2.

This resolution I can truthfully check off! We went this year with our friends David and Tiffany, watching two plays – As You Like It, and A Comedy of Errors. This proved to be one of the highlights of the year and I still look back on the event with fondness. One lesson learned from completion of this resolution: Plan ahead to accomplish your goals. My wife and I prepared for months in advance just to make sure this one dream could become a reality.

Now that we will live in Seattle this year, I would love to go back but realistically, that probably isn’t possible.

3. Help Dantzel graduate by the end of the year.
Current status: Complete.

This was a struggle. My wife graduated all right, kicking and screaming along the way. However, her graduation opened up new doors for us, and so it was worth it driving her down to class everyday and staying in the car waiting so that I could pick her up right away and go straight home (she hated campus near the end and it was all I could do to just convince her to keep going to class).

4. Get published in something more prestigious than the Daily Universe.
Current status: Maybe.

I figured this resolution would work as a catch-all for writing, since getting published is the general end-goal of writing.

This is a maybe. While I never got published in any publication this year, I did actually accomplish a goal that I didn’t think would happen for a while – I wrote as a living. My friend inspired me to go out on a limb, and I did actually do several projects/jobs writing as a living. Unfortunately, the Great Recession hit, and most of those jobs dried up. While I edited translated documents for another company, those jobs are few and sporadic.

Writing for a living was the greatest and hardest object lesson of my life. The life of a freelance writer is difficult and stressful. You must constantly look for the next project before the current one finishes, and competition is rough. In the end, my short-lived freelance writing career in Utah petered out as companies cut back spending. I had several job interviews as a technical or web content writer in the late-fall, but nothing came of it. In retrospect, it’s difficult to assess this period of my life because as a freelance writer, you could always be working. But if you’re always working, you end up burning yourself out or killing yourself. My blog has a long dearth of activity during one period of employment where I wrote web content for an SEO company. When you write close to 25-30 200 word blog entries a day about dieting or herpes, writing can actually stop being fun.

After the forced break from writing (curse you, Great Recession!), it’s become fun again, and I’ve been approached by several friends on writing for their publications (albeit, for free – still, a job is a job even if you’re not getting paid), so hopefully times are looking up.

While I never made a lot of money writing this year (just ask my wife), the experience I’ve gained is tremendous. You learn by doing, the saying goes, and writing as a job taught me a lot. I made a ton of mistakes, as most first-time writers most likely do, but I also feel a much better writer because of it, though my insecurity about my writing has skyrocketed through the roof – a side-ef

5. Be ready to graduate by the end of 2010 spring of 2011.
Current status: Uncontrollable laughter.

There’s an old Chinese story of a monk who traveled to a master to learn to become a master himself. Upon his arrival, he prostrated himself at the master’s feet and begged, “Teach me, so that I, too, may become a master.” The master remained unmoved by the monk’s pleadings and said nothing. Every day, the monk returned to throw himself at the master’s feet and repeat his plea: “Teach me, so that I, too, may become a master.” Each time, the master simply said nothing. Finally, the monk sat down next to the master, angry at his silence and glared at the horizon. After several hours of this, the master opened his eyes, looked at the monk and said, “Now, you are ready to learn.”

Okay, I made that up, but it sounds legitimate, right? Schooling for me seems like that. At this point, it seems like academics will become a major part of my life, and if that’s true, then I will always be going to school. Sure, at some point, I will graduate with an undergraduate degree, but then I’ll just go back for my masters degree, then my doctorate, than post-doc work, and so on. In other words, it seems more productive to sit down and learn rather than continually worrying about at what point I will become a master as well.

6. Learn Tai Chi and more yoga.
Current status: Sort-of.

Tai Chi we did not learn, only because it’s difficult to find Tai Chi teachers in Utah. Not impossible, but difficult. We’re hoping in Seattle, it will be easier.

However, I can do a mean tree pose, though daily practice has never coalesced into reality. It remains a goal of mine.

7. Be at a healthy BMI of 22.
Current BMI: Don’t ask.

This is just a sad question. I don’t know about my BMI as I’m in a hotel room in Portland and have no access to my Wii Fit, but I’m sure it’s bad. Bad, bad, bad. I need to get better.

8. Figure out how to go to school and work at the same time without doing poorly in one area while prospering in another.
Current status: Meh.

This is the most difficult area in my life, and while I knew of this problem’s existence in the beginning of the year (as evidenced by me trying to tackle it with a resolution), the causes are only beginning to unravel. Life pre-mission is straight forward: school, work, mission, with very little overlap. I went to school. Then I worked for my mission. Then I went on my mission. But when you get back from your mission, suddenly, school, work, and church must all be handled at once, and I’ve never been good at it.

My zeal in life comes in sporadic bursts, and always from one subject to another. My wife is beginning to understand this and learns to deal with it. Without her, my life would certainly be anchorless; with her around, she can tell when my focus is waning and gently directs the flow of my productive energy into something else. We’re also beginning to learn that there is only one consistency when it comes to the productive side of my life – my love of constant learning. When whatever I’m working on ceases to challenge me, I become bored and move on. Thus, we’re trying to find a good career balance for me where I can turn my weaknesses into strengths, rather than trying to change them completely (which rarely ever works, I hear).

9. Learn enough Java, CSS, XML and PHP by the end of the year to be able to do some neat stuff with it.
Current Status: In progress.

I don’t know Java and PHP as I don’t possess the programming mind. I do possess the designing mind, and so scripting comes easily for me. Unfortunately, my designing energy relies heavily on visual sensory input, and without any graphics editing software, my project in overhauling my parents’ company’s website has stymied. I’m currently trying to find a way around this obstacle and pouring much of my creative energy into it.

10. Volunteer more often, preferably at the Habitat for Humanity or something akin to it.
Current Progress: Not as good as I would have liked.

I’ve never been a good volunteer of my time. I’ve compensated with material possessions, and this year is no different. This winter, my wife and I have donated a great deal of material possessions to food banks and places like Deseret Industries. But I didn’t volunteer much. I hope to change this in the coming year. I am planning on hopefully volunteering at libraries, as I love libraries. The only thing I love more than libraries is my life. And possibly food. Maybe.

Post-Game Analysis:

It’s never easy admitting mistakes made in the past, and this year is no different. Still, I want to continue onward and look forward to 2010. I’ve been secretive/vague about my moving to Seattle, mostly because my pride and ego simply can’t take the fact that I’m coming back home without a college degree. In essence, this year may end on what could be conceived as absolute failure – New Years Eve, I will officially arrive home without any paper saying I succeeded in college.

Like the prodigal son, I come broken, battered, bruised, and lacking any more excuses. Still, my parents come running to me and offer the robe and ring, though I do not deserve it. I’m content with living as a servant, earning back whatever trust and confidence I’ve surely lost in my peers and family. Still, while I castigate myself in shame, my friends have been incredibly supportive and have thus far spared the rod – which only invigorates me to truly deserving their love. The flood of support and love shown by my friends, family, and dear, sweet, patient wife has literally moved me to tears on more than one occasion. For reasons I cannot understand, they’re still there, wanting for me to succeed.

So poised at the cusp of 2010, I’m cautiously optimistic. Set back? Yes. Bruised pride and ego? Check. Humble circumstances? Yep. But I’m surrounded by the support of family and friends, with only potential in my path, and a burning desire to earn back the respect of those around me (though they assure me I’ve not lost it, I don’t believe it for one second). This year has been difficult and hard with many a lesson learned. Here’s hoping the next year will be less brutal, more educational, and certainly more fruitful and meaningful as this one.

I recently sent out three tweets concerning our arrival into San Francisco as we move across the country to our new home in Seattle. They were ambiguous and very angry, and for good measure!

First of all, our MapQuest directions to our hotel simply stopped once it dumped us into San Francisco. Our hotel was The Opal (a very nice, classy hotel) on 1050 Van Ness, but the directions ceased to exist when we arrived on Mission. After an hour of wandering around (and some Mormon cussing), we finally found it, no help to our map. Every time I tried to turn, San Francisco would have two one-way streets in the exact opposite direction I wanted to go in a row, when it normally alternates. Streets would suddenly split and lurch this way and that, leaving us making a wrong turn and going in the complete opposite direction – which would then take us more time to get back as we navigate the ridiculous streets of downtown San Francisco.

Dear San Francisco: You suck.

about 21 hours ago from txt

When we finally got to our hotel, they told us to go park in a garage they have a deal with. We arrived at the doors of the garage at 12:36 am; they apparently close at 12:30 am. We circled around and came back to the hotel. They told us to try another 24 hour garage – which was the same garage that closed at 12:30 am. We circled about again, and finally ended up parking at least five blocks away at valet parking at 1:45 am after driving around aimlessly for a parking garage that wasn’t closed.

My wife grew up all her life in Utah, and if you want to know anything about Utah, it’s that the nightlife usually shuts down after 10 pm. She had heard so many stories about the “big cities” that never slept – and indeed, it seemed that way on the outside in San Francisco. People were walking back and forth with friends, tons of restaurants were still open. In fact, everything was still open – except for parking garages. My wife was sorely disappointed. It seemed illogical – that when visiting San Francisco, you basically had a curfew if you drove here.

After parking, we walked the 5+ blocks back to The Opal, carrying nothing (we were just too tired and frustrated to be walking past a bunch of homeless people with giant sacks of epic lootz on our backs) and finally went up to our room. We showered, and went to bed well after 2 am, even though we came into the city at around 11:30 pm.

Eff you, San Francisco. Eff you. We will NEVER come back again. #epicmove

about 20 hours ago from txt

Also, when we got back to our valet parking, we got our car with our stuff back – almost. My iPod Shuffle was missing. Thanks, San Francisco.

The next morning while driving out, we passed over the bay and I realized that a lot of different things culminated into the horrible night we suffered. In the end, the whole thing was almost comically funny, if it hadn’t happened to me just the night before. The experience would certainly work as fodder for future stories and writing, and it was really a bunch of peoples’ faults – MapQuest for preventing us in getting to our hotel in time, the parking garages of San Francisco for deciding to close relatively early in the night, the urban planners of San Francisco for designing streets while smashed. Just alone, they would act as minor inconveniences, but when combined, they made me so angry that when a grungy old man on a bike ran a red light just as I was about to cross the intersection, I was very seriously tempted to accelerate and hit him.

Goodbye, San Francisco. You made life wretchedly hard for us, but hopefully no hard feelings. #epicmove

about 12 hours ago from txt

The first of the series, Literary Song Analysis endeavors to deconstruct popular songs, revealing deep thematic ideas representing the conflict of the modern era through pedantic, superfluous, overly academic writing and ample doses of exaggeration. The first, Cake’s legendary Short Skirt, Long Jacket, reveals the double standard placed on women in a post-feminist world, detailing the pull of career as well the pull of domesticity.

While at first glance, Cake’s popular song “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” may appear to describe the singer’s ideal woman, “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” actually details the double standard imposed upon women by men in a post-feminist environment, pressuring women to not only adhere to the “empowered woman” stereotype but also to the traditional female figure of the era prior to the advent of modern feminism. The singer, in Cake’s general ironic style, lauds the modern-day woman, but in the end reveals a desire for the traditional, domesticated female. This conflict manifests itself in the titular fashion combination of a short skirt and long jacket, transforming it into a metaphor for the double standard modern-day American society places upon its female population.

In the opening lines, Cake describes what seems to be the modern woman. She has “a mind like a diamond” and demonstrates capability at work, such as eliminating red tape and picking up slack. The woman has obvious power in her position, as she tours the facilities rather than merely working there. This girl has “uninterrupted prosperity,” “good dividends,” and “smooth liquidation,” showing financial success as well. The singer goes as far as sexualizing her. For example, she puts up her hair and plays with her jewelry, both visual cues of a woman flirting with someone or attempting to attract attention to herself in a physical manner. He also idealizes her beyond simply a tactile sense – her fingernails, he asserts, “shine like justice,” comparing an area of beauty on the female body to a desirable, abstract concept.

Therefore, many people often assume that Cake’s song “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” merely describes what many would call a modern-day, empowered woman, and that the singer praises her for her independence and competence in work and money. She wakes up early, stays up late (denoting an active social life), and is physically attractive as well. If written by any other band, this would lead to an accurate assumption, but Cake’s past songs of irony and sarcasm denote that more may be at play in this song.

Many people miss the auditory cue that demonstrates a shift in the song’s mood and message. After the third verse and second repetition of the phrase “Short Skirt, Long Jacket,” Cake plays a momentary instrumental bridge (the auditory cue for change in the song). The next verse displays a stark difference between the first three verses describing a modern-day, empowered woman, and describes someone completely different. The singer fantasizes of meeting her at Citibank (where else to meet such a powerful, wealthy woman?) and immediately subjugates her into a subservient role. They meet “when she borrows my pen,” the singer says. Immediately, she is an inferior position. She requires a simple tool (tools remaining firmly in the masculine role of the American cultural psyche), but lacks it to complete her routine tasks. She must ask the singer, a male, for help. Thus, the fantasized relationship initiates with the man firmly in control, and the singer begins to sing about a completely different person.

The singer sings immediately after the meeting that she trades in her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron. MG is a well known British sports car manufacturer, while the Chrysler LeBaron was famous in its inception as the lowest priced car in Chrysler’s automobile line. While it evolved into a lower-priced convertible for a brief time, by the 1990s, when “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” was written, the LeBaron was known as a medium priced sedan, not nearly as luxurious or fancy as the MG the subject previously drove. The singer drives this point further reminding us that this car, rather than to show off or as a status symbol for the woman’s prosperity, simply exists to get her to places, implying the car is now used mostly for running errands. Also, the car has the hallmark of American comfort – the cup holder armrest. This car the woman now drives more closely resembles a car found in use by modern American families and in modern American suburbia, whose juxtaposition with the aforementioned MG displays a drastic shift in either the woman’s goals, attitudes, or at the very least, her luxury consumption and driving habits.

In short, the singer has, in the short space of one verse directly following their meeting in Citibank, effectively domesticated the woman. She has changed her name from Kitty, a more exotic, adventurous name, to Karen, a very common, conservative name for females. She no longer drives about in the speedy MG, but drives a simple sedan for errands. This woman contrasts sharply with the idealized image of the modern, emancipated woman the singer initially sings of, resembling more the stereotypical 1950s American suburban housewife rather than the Wall Street financial power broker mentioned in the beginning of the song (and whom many people assume this song idealizes).

And what of the short skirt/long jacket combination the singer raves about repeatedly? This phrase is obviously important enough to repeat a total of three times, with the song ending with this phrase. The titular short skirt/long jacket represents the duality and tension between the acceptable desire for a modern-day woman, and the more socially unacceptable desire for the traditional, domesticated woman. In the post-feminist age, men who desire the latter are seen as oppressive, while the men who desire the former are lauded as progressive. Women, also, are condemned for desiring to be housewives and praised for ambition in the workforce. This constant tension between two stereotypical extremes plays out in the short skirt/long jacket metaphor. The short skirt represents the emancipation of woman (womens’ rights are, generally, directly associated with rising hemline) – the woman is emancipated sexually in her choice of dress, but also in her career decisions and financial success. However, the long jacket would cover the short skirt, blocking it out.

This dichotomy represents the modern-day society’s double standard towards women. Because of the general success of the modern feminist movement in the United States, women do experience unprecedented freedom and individual prosperity, but old habits and traditions linger. Yes, women may now wear short skirts and still consider themselves socially acceptable; however, the singer allows this modern-day woman to exist, but only if she continues to cover it up with a long jacket. She may be successful and independent, but once she meets the singer (i.e., a potential mate), she must immediately place herself in a subservient role and domesticate herself, effectively covering her once symbol of independence and emancipation – the short skirt – with the long jacket of traditional feminine roles. In essence, Cake’s Short Skirt, Long Jacket represents the murky post-feminist world, idealizing what many would consider the ideal, emancipated woman, but in the end revealing an undercurrent of nostalgia for the “good old days” – the stereotypical, domesticated woman.

This recent move has subjected me to a most unusual experiment – instead of just packing up all of our things and muttering under my breath that we have too much stuff and I ought to just throw it all away and start over, my wife and I have carefully selected what matters most to us. The nature of the move means we can only bring what we can fit in our tiny Toyota Yaris, not known for its spacious cargo room.

To get an idea, give yourself this thought experiment – you can only bring what you can fit into a tiny starter car. This includes clothes, any cookware you want to bring, as well as books, games, the television, or what have you. What do you choose to bring? And what do your decisions say about you?

One of the more surprising decisions I’ve made involves ditching a great deal of my library for another kind of writing – my own personal records. There’s a folder with all of the newspaper articles I’ve written in high school; two notebooks filled with notes on the General Conferences, zone conferences, district meetings, and personal study sessions during my mission. On top of that lies a large, overstuffed manila envelope with every letter to the mission president I sent which he returned to me at the end of my mission. There’s a journal, a folder stuffed with notes for several board/card game ideas I’ve tinkered with over the years, several academic papers I’ve written for class I’m particularly fond of, a notebook with a bucket list I wrote after my mission, and a stack of folders stuffed with various notes – much of it consists of scraps of paper, perhaps a pamphlet folded in half with writing ideas scribbled in the margins, or conversations I’ve held with my wife during boring meetings. Not a few are sticky notes of names of songs I’ve heard. One is plastered with quotes by Roger Ebert blasting the new Star Wars trilogy, another with titles of books I’ve been meaning to read.

My wife handed me the stack of papers in the beginning of the move, asking me to sort it all out. Slowly, I began to categorize the scraps of papers, remembering ideas in the past, reminding myself of a book I wanted to read, or digesting once more a quote long-forgotten about Japanese tea ceremonies. When finding the bucket list I wrote after my mission, I noticed a project that I forgot about but remembered the zeal I once had for it – to compile all of my missionary notes, letters, journal entries, etc., compare them against the planners I collected along the mission, and then publish it in one large document for family records. That zeal returned, as I endeavored to decide whether I should re-type my old mission letters or scan them as PDFs – or both.

I found crumbling notebooks – one following the instructions of a creative writing class and filled with a conversation I overheard for each day, for example. My mind feverishly sought to restore them. I love the novels I’ve read over the years, but when deciding between a haphazard historical record of the interests and subjects I’ve studied to the books I’ve read, there’s no real decision. I suppose it’s great hubris to determine my writings – the frenzied, disjointed notes I’ve kept on a plethora of subjects – are worth more than the writings of The Greats in the past. But I can’t help it; the combination of my Mormon identity and the amateur history in me screamed out the equivalent of “This belongs in a museum!”

I really can’t explain it but I,
I hear the music when I look at you.
Orchestrating the song to accommodate the moment.
- Soundtrack For Our Movie, Mae

Lately, Amazon has been selling mp3 album downloads for around $5 (the recent sale says that for every $7.99+ album you buy, you get one of the $5 albums for free), which means I’ve been on a music buying frenzy. A lot of my music library is confined still to the compact disc format, and my music tastes have changed drastically from my high school years.

I’ve taken advantage of this opportunity to start building up my woefully lacking “coffee house” music, which my wife looks upon with relative indifference. Some of the music I’ve picked up (Ingrid Michaelson, Owl City) she’s embraced with enthusiasm, while others (Mirah, Rocking Horse Winner) not so much. Because her interest in keeping up with music has waned with age, I have open season on the music I’m snapping up. I’ve found I have a slightly curious way of deciding whether I want an album – while snacking on the samples available on Amazon, I close my eyes and see if it will match up with my anticipated next six months as a soundtrack – or if it would fit well with the sitcom that Quinton and I always talk about writing and producing someday (which explains the “coffee house” obsession; also, for what it’s worth, this is really how I choose my music).

At the moment, I’m poised to purchase Dreaming Through The Noise by Vienna Teng, Wind-Up Canary by Casey Dienel, Maybe I’m Dreaming by Owl City, Fireflies and Songs by Sara Groves, Taller Children by Elizabeth & The Catapult, and One Cell in the Sea by A Fine Frenzy. We’re still waiting for about $100 of Amazon credit to process, so there will be more music purchased. Oh yes, there will be more.

Which brings me to this thought. It’s been a fairly long time since I’ve bought music (I tend to buy music in maniacal bursts separated by years of disquieting silence and furious consumption of what I have). How do you buy music? What do you look for in what you purchase? And got any suggestions?

Dear Women’s Clothing Industry,

Go to hell.

No, seriously. Go to hell. I’m not sure if you’re aware of the torturous emotional war you’re waging against your own market, your own demographic you’re trying to sell products to, but if you are aware (and unless you live in a black hole of ignorance, you are) then please do us all a favor and go burn for all eternity.

What are you thinking? I recently went clothing shopping with my wife. She had always expressed reluctance whenever it came to clothes shopping. She said that it made her feel fat, that it made her feel inadequate, that it made her feel ugly. I will admit, I thought she was exaggerating, that she was being an overly sensitive female. I feel like a jerk for thinking this now, but I am nowhere close to being as mean spirited as you.

Throughout the entire shopping experience, I felt like an abusive ex-boyfriend continued to belittle my wife the entire time. My wife is not ugly. In her prime when she worked out every day, she had the same measurements as Marilyn Monroe (no joke). She’s gained a little weight since then but nowhere near the clinically obese the media parades everyday as social pariahs. No, she’s a healthy weight with great hips and a bust most girls are jealous of. So how come she can’t find any clothes for her? Apparently, the curvy standard of said Marilyn Monroe is out – the new look that is “in” seems to be that of Auschwitz. That, or little girls who haven’t hit puberty yet. What kind of terrible double standard do you set, where you applaud women with large breasts and yet promote a body type that naturally prohibits it? Why do you promote such terrible insanity?

We eventually found a hoodie for her. It’s incredibly cute and I love it. It fits perfectly, a beautiful brown color to compliment her hair and eyes, with a long, tapered feel that clings to her very nicely. But guess what? The size is XXL. What in all that is good and holy is that all about? Are you trying to imply my wife can’t get around on her own unless she’s propelling herself with a motorized chair? Because she is a very beautiful woman, much more beautiful than your models who you could switch out with the kids on those charities asking for money for starving African children and the only thing different is their skin color. It still bugs her to this day.

Like I said, I love the hoodie. I compliment her when she wears it at least five to ten times a day. But every single time, she mutters, “Yeah, I look great in an XXL hoodie.” When we started shopping, she said bitterly that the sizes should be renamed as Too Small, Still Too Small, and Small. I laughed, but my heart sank as the day drew on. Her comment hit the target perfectly. She wasn’t being sarcastic; she had simply endured one too many embarrassing, demoralizing shopping trips.

How do you get away with this? How are you the only industry that runs on maintaining a cruel war of divide-and-conquer on the entire female population in this country, of turning one sister against another simply because of body type? How are you the only industry that can continue this slash-and-burn insult against all women everywhere? How is it that people continue to buy your products that you purposely design to humiliate them? You promote a false sense of beauty that you surely acknowledge as naturally impossible, driving women to starving themselves, slicing themselves up, destroying their original, beautiful identities into false masks, terrible, twisted caricatures of people once unique and charming and quirky without any help from you.

So you know what? Go to hell.

Go to hell for the millions of women whose confidence you have shattered through your dubious practices and malicious marketing.

Go to hell for the millions of women you’ve driven to starving their bodies to fit your artificial, sickening ideal of beauty.

Go to hell for the millions of women who feel compelled to cut up their breasts as if it was sushi, inject chemicals into their faces, shave off their bones with instruments no more sophisticated than the power tools in my father’s garage.

Go to hell for the women who’ve taken their own lives, who drudge through lives of abuse, physical, emotional, and sexual, because they feel they deserve no better, for inspiring an entire generation of men to expect the impossible from those who would do anything just to feel attractive in their presence.

Go to hell for the millions of women who despise themselves, who translate your veiled attacks on their physique as critiques on their personalities as a whole.

Go to hell for all that you’ve done, for destroying the self-confidence of my wife who, despite the fact is the most beautiful girl on the planet, cannot realize this because you and your drone lackeys have told her repeatedly that no man will love her unless she loses forty pounds, dyes her hair, and have breasts so large it would be almost comical if it wasn’t so depressingly sad. You’ve subsisted for far too long as a parasite on our better halves, preying on their insecurities to line your pockets, stoking the fires of self-loathing for your own profit. And for that, dear Women’s Clothing Industry, go to hell. May you pay the price for every tear you’ve battered out of women everywhere, for every stab and twist in their heart, for every thought of hatred directed towards themselves because of your lies and influence until you’ve fulfilled your debt in full.

Sincerely, Ted Lee

On a whim, I tried to imagine my wife with blue hair. I’ve discussed this with some friends and we all came to the general consensus that my wife with dark blue hair and light blue highlights would actually look really good and that she would be able to pull it off really well.

As an artist, the idea of a wife with hair color pushing the boundaries of acceptable and yet having an undeniably aesthetically pleasing look to it intrigued me. I’ve approached her with this idea several times, and she always gently reminded me that blue hair is what many consider as an “extreme hairstyle.” To this end, many people would most definitely think she wouldn’t deserve a temple recommend, and in the temple she would most definitely garner more than her fair share of staring.

I contemplated this idea, for it deeply disturbed me that one could be denied saving ordinances for simply possessing an “unnatural” hair color. After all, women who dye their hair brown or black or blonde can go into the temple just fine, no questions asked. And it’s definitely not an issue of looking natural or unnatural, unless women naturally grow bleached blonde highlights on a regular basis.

I then thought about the slew of billboards that have cropped up between Provo and Salt Lake City advertising breast enhancement procedures. As far as I know, if you get a boob job, to put it in the vulgar, you can still gain a temple recommend and attend the temple and very few people will hassle you.

In my opinion, elective breast augmentation for the purposes of merely looking more attractive is the epitome of Isaiah’s prophesy that the daughters of Zion would become haughty – to the point of spiritual death. So does this seem right? Is blue hair the greater sin compared to a boob job?

The continuation in a series of posts listing some of the books that made the rigorous process in determining which I take with me and the others that must wait in Utah until my wife and I come back for them.

6. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Mark Haddon’s famous book is A Curious Incident with the Dog in the Night-time, which got a lot of press for its unique narrator – a boy with autism. However, my favorite novel by Mark Haddon is A Spot of Bother, detailing a traditional, conservative British family whose only daughter is marrying someone everyone in the family hates. Meanwhile, the son must determine whether he should bring his boyfriend (and scandalize the entire family, especially his parents, still in semi-denial) or not, the mother tries to mop up an affair, and the father slowly begins to go a little bit crazy, convinced he will die soon of horrible disease – but hopes he can hide it from everyone and contain it until after the wedding so that he doesn’t inconvenience anyone. It’s a great book on family and acceptance, but like Then We Came to the End, it’s got some graphic scenes and some good old fashioned Brit cussing, so if you’re easily offended, pass this one, too.

Excerpt:

He didn’t have a problem with homosexuality per se. Men having sex with men. One could imagine, if one was in the business of imagining such things, that there were situations where it might happen, situations in which chaps were denied the normal outlets. Military camps. Long sea voyages. One didn’t want to dwell on the plumbing but one could almost see it as a sporting activity. Letting off steam. High spirits. Handshake and a hot shower afterward.

It was the thought of men purchasing furniture together that disturbed him. Men snuggling. More disconcerting, somehow, than shenanigans in public toilets. It gave him the unpleasant feeling that there was a weakness in the very fabric of the world. Like seeing a man hit a woman in the street. Or suddenly not being able to remember the bedroom you had as a child.

Still, things changed. Mobile phones. Thai restaurants. You had to remain elastic or you turned into an angry fossil railing at litter.

7. A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise edited by Bonnie Tsui

A collection of essays about nature written by writers no older than thirty, this collection puts a new spin on “nature writing,” where young writers products of the late 20th to early 21st century write about their ways of connecting with whatever nature remains around them. The title derives from a delightful essay of a  young man who, broken hearted, decides to move into a tent like Thoreau to Walden to remove himself from his worldly woes and learns a little about himself. Another essay speaks about learning the lesson of growing up from a group of river rafting guides who refuse to do just that. Another author writes of her intense fear of lightning and her conflicting desire to venture around the world. Each essay is more than delightful and makes nature much more accessible again to one who’s grown up in the city all his life.

Excerpt:

But more surprisingly, once I could hold my despair and run a hand along its saggy, tired edges, the woe didn’t seem so boundless. The tent gradually became not a symbol of doom, but a very real refuge, my own pod of stability and control in a world that felt beyond control. Wind and rain could lash the tent and I would stay warm and cozy – as long as I held the walls up and stayed in the middle and had a towel to mop up the mess. So many years later, things really haven’t changed.

8. Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson

I first heard about this book from my friend Kimberly, who majored in communication studies. This iconoclastic book defies what conventional wisdom teaches us – that popular culture makes us really, really dumb. Popular culture won’t get you to Harvard, Steven Johnson writes, but it is making the general population smarter overall. If you want to learn how video games and even reality TV shows are helping us become a more smarter generation, I highly recommend this book.

Excerpt:

To get around these prejudices [against games], try this thought experiment. Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: video games were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuries – and then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly they’re all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:

Reading books chronically understimulates the senses. Unlike the longstanding tradition of gameplaying – which engages the child in a vivid, three-dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements – books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while games engage the full range of the sensory and motor cortices.

9. The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In by Paisley Rekdal

Born of a Chinese mother and a Norwegian father, Paisley Rekdal writes painfully honest essays about being of mixed heritage, and what it means to never truly fit in. The most powerful essays for me detail her trip to South Korea, teaching English on a Fullbright contract. Having visited South Korea just a couple summers before, I could understand the almost traumatic experience of facing your Asian heritage head on and feeling crushed by the culture that should (in your mind) accept you with open arms.

Excerpt:

I’ve never seen romantic stationary in Korean. There must be some, I think to myself, and later paw through the notepads in my desk, the fresh packets sold at school supply shops. But the ones I can find are always in English, I see, or French or Latin. And suddenly it occurs to me that this is sad, but because these cards seem to be spoiling something about Korea…I don’t like the fact that, to me, these cards appear like lies imported from another culture, a cheap sentimentality that feeds off the educationally enforced separation of the sexes.

Though I have often accused Koreans of whitewashing the truth about themselves with ritualized politeness, with Joseph at Usok I suddenly do not find this much different from the romantic moves and singers America produces in huge volumes on a seemingly daily basis…Perhaps my students, seeing movies from my culture, buying stationary with my language, have been taught to believe this artificial sentimentality is all that really matters to us. And maybe that makes them sad, too.

10. Jewish Dharma: A Guide to the Practice of Judaism and Zen by Brenda Shoshanna, PhD

For the longest time (and still today), I wished I was Jewish. No joke; I always thought Hannukah was cooler than Christmas as a kid, and it wasn’t just the presents. For some reason, decorating a tree seemed silly – celebrating God’s miracles of oil extension by re-enacting it seemed more real. On my mission, I declared to my district leader and good friend that I would only marry a girl from the tribe of Judah. Sure enough, on news of my engagement, Wolfgramm asked me if I accomplished this goal. I had forgotten about that boast a long time ago, but eerily enough, my wife derived from the lineage of Judah.

On top of that, I’m Asian, and with that come a lot of Asian baggage, despite my American identity. I have a lot of attitudes and traditions my parents taught me stemming from Confucianism and Buddhism. In high school during my senior year, I took a World Religions class from Mr. Prufer, who was Zen Buddhist. During that critical year, I was very close to running away from home and joining a Buddhist monastery.

Fast forward to 2009, and I’m still a faithful, practicing Mormon, though much more mature in spirituality than I was five years ago as a senior in high school. At Sam Weller’s, this book catches my eye – a book about how to be a practicing  Ju-Bu (Jewish-Buddhist)? And if there is such a thing as a Ju-Bu, could there be a Mo-Ju-Bu? I set to find out.

In a period of my life where my religious practice seemed stale and stagnant, this book breathed new life into it. The author writes about her life experiences, of being raised Jewish and finding Buddhism and trying to reconcile her two belief systems into one. Sincerely honest without rationalization or scripture wresting, Brenda Shoshanna demonstrates President Hinckley’s request that all religions bring what’s good in theirs, and see if we can add on to it. Perhaps, my version of Mormonism is less meet-and-greets, funeral potatoes, and college ward prayer meetings, and more meditating and mitzvot observing.

Excerpt:

He [my Zen master] was right, but questions still haunted me. As zazen deepened, I could not avoid the persistent questions that rose up within – I thought about my family, my cousins, parents, sister, brother. Am I abandoning you, I wondered? Have I left my Jewish roots behind? Am I running away from who I truly am? What about all those who died to uphold the Torah? At certain times I felt that doing deep zazen, I was fulfilling the true Torah, actualizing all the commandments. Other times, dressed in my Zen robes, I felt as though I was trespassing, violating my deeper self.

…One day I said to him, “I feel I should go home.”

“Where is your true home?”

I breathed deeply for a moment.

“Your true home. Before you were born! Eshin, calm down. You have not done wrong. You are not doing wrong here.”

“According to my people I must go home.”

“Then stop coming.”

“I can’t.”

“Then sit more deeply, to the very bottom of the well. Finally, when you are ripe, you will see that we are all One.”

I recently wrote about how I’m planning on leaving a good 90% of our library behind while we move to Washington. The place we’ll be staying at is interim and cramped for space, so a lot of our library must be packed up for good and stored until the Lord seems fit to reunite my wife and I with them.

I also recently wrote about how the decision process is like being forced to choose between your children, and as fitting, my wife has part of the library that is “definitely hers” while the rest are “his books.” Thus, I am forced to sift the wheat from the okay wheat from the tares, only to bring those books whose character doth excel above all others. Or something like that.

Well, while many people look at different indicators to discover more about someone (for Polonius and Perez Hilton, it’s clothes; for nutritionists, it’s what you eat), I am a firm believer that books reveal more about a person than anything else, and so here are the first half of the 10 books I new immediately I needed to keep:

1. The Holy Bible and triple combination (The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price) -

Being a good, faithful Mormon boy, of course these four books top the list. Some may cry foul in combining these four volumes into one selection, but those who do obviously have never seen what many LDS members affectionately call “the quad.”

My particular volume is not a quadruple, but separated into two – The Bible and the rest of the Mormon canonical works combined into one; it’s easier to study cross references with both volumes instead of flipping back and forth with fingers in pages. My particular set is also the extra large print version, which I got during my mission for the extra wide margins for note-taking. The notes come in two layers – early-mission notes are inked with various colored pens, while late-mission (and post-mission) notes are scribbled in pencil, a habit I picked up from the mission president.

Excerpt:

I still carry them to this day and they are my principle workbook for scripture study. They also carry silly notes my wife and I pass each other during sacrament meeting, one which details a cartoon of me throwing sharks with my wife’s version of herself rendered in stick figure form swooning, “So hawt!” I am not making this up.

2. The Book of Mormon, RLDS version, circa 1955 -

This is the closest thing I have to an heirloom and prized possession. Should I become rich and famous and robbed whilst a character of a popular crime show (such as Castle, wink wink Nathan Fillion), the object of desire by said robbers would be this tome. I picked up while browsing an antique shop in Blackwell, Oklahoma on my mission. At first glance, it was just a really old edition of The Book of Mormon, more than enough excuse to buy it. Upon further examination, I realized that Alma chapter 21 is a whopping 186 verses long, and that a paper pasted in the front cover had you writing to The Council of Twelve, The Auditorium, Independence, Missouri for more information. Turns out, this was an RLDS version, and this book became that much more precious.

Excerpt:

As a bonus, included in the book was a wonderful Christian tract about how the barcode was the mark of the beast.

3. Digging to America by Anne Tyler -

This bittersweet novel captures all of the conflicting and intricate emotions of immigration in America. Two very different families meet at the airport, both waiting for their adopted Korean daughter. When they receive them at the same time, one family suggests an “Arrival Day,” celebrating the anniversary of the two Korean daughters entering their lives. Thus begins a story of acceptance and rejection, of inclusion and exclusion, full of laughs, cringe-worthy events, and the hilariously melancholy observations of an Iranian grandmother with a Korean grandchild, Maryam.

Excerpt:

Lou was too busy talking to keep up with them. First he talked to Sami, on his other side – boring man-talk about jobs, followed by the high price of housing once he learned that Sami sold real estate. Then it was Maryam’s turn: how long had she been in this country? and did she like it?

Maryam hated being asked such questions, partly because she had answered them so many times before but also because she preferred to imagine (unreasonable though it was) that maybe she didn’t always, instantly, come across as a foreigner. “Where are you from?” someone might ask just when she was priding herself on having navigated some particularly intricate and illogical piece of English. She longed to say, “From Baltimore. Why?” but lacked the nerve. Now she spoke so courteously that Lou could have had no inkling how she felt. “I’ve been here thirty-nine years,” she said, and, “Yes, of course. I love it.”

4. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End has been described as the novel form of the television show The Office, Catch-22 about white collar office life, or the next great American novel for the 21st century. It details in lucid prose the antics of an advertising agency on the verge of recession. As the firm lets their employees go one by one, the paranoia increases and everyone learns how to cope (or not cope) with their crumbling lives as they realize how much each co-worker means to them – and how little they know about them. The book’s unique hallmark is its narrator – 1st person plural. Ferris’ novel sucks you in as you start to feel like one of the employees, whispering over the cubicles and gossiping by the water cooler about each character’s private and public lives. This book sports one of the best endings in the history of literature (really, dead serious, best ending I’ve ever read in my life) but also sports some pretty heavy language, so avoid if you’re not into that stuff.

Excerpt:

Tom wanted to throw his computer against the window, but only if he could guarantee it would break the glass and land on the street below. He was under his desk removing cords. “that’s sixty-two stories, Tom,” Benny said. And Tom agreed it was a bad idea if he couldn’t break the glass. If glass didn’t break they would say Tom Mota couldn’t even f— up right – he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of that, the bastards. We were the bastards he was referring to, in part. “But I don’t think it’ll break the glass,” said Benny. Tom stopped tooling around with his computer. “But I gotta do something,” he said, sitting back on his heels.

5.  A Treasury of Jewish Folklore edited by Nathan Ausubel

I picked up this gem in Seattle, during my honeymoon, at a small bookstore in Pike Place Market. The owner is a great guy who loves to talk about your purchases with great zeal and friendliness. I picked up this book for two reasons. One, it was old looking, and old books get me every single time. Two, it’s a collection of Jewish folklore! What more do you need?

I ended up lucking out since this book is actually really old – the fifth printing in November 1948 (the first printing was in June 1948), and according to my friend who went looking for a copy of his own on Amazon, has seen many a share of its editions and printings.

The first month or so, I would read a couple of pages and then read my favorite ones out loud to my wife; bless her Jewish-lineage heart, she tolerated my readings and would even pretend to laugh from time to time. I still read through this on a regular basis, and I will still read some of my favorite stories out loud to my beautiful wife.

Excerpt:

A Jew was drowning in the Dnieper River. He cried for help. Two Czarist policemen ran up. When they saw it was a Jew, they said, “Let the Jew drown!”

When the man saw his strength was ebbing he shouted with all his might, “Down with the Czar!”

Hearing such seditious words, the policemen plunged in, pulled him out, and arrested him.