Whatever, Reader

Image property of MLB.com In 2003, I don't remember what the hell I was doing. I was still in high school, in hot pursuit of the American Dream. The important things were good grades, explosive charisma, and whatever extracurriculars I had chosen. I didn't watch baseball. While it appealed to me here and there, I knew little beyond a handful of names on trading cards and a few viewings of the World Series. It wasn't important.  I couldn't distinguish between a sinking curveball and a sailing 4-seamer, let alone when to use either, or against whom. Showboating? Don't b atters just get beaned by accident? I asked, blind to the whirlwind of signals coming from the dugout as the base coach patted his chest, chin, chest, chin, left bicep, right wrist, chin, sweep some dust off the left forearm. No, i f baseball were a food, I was savoring a bag of Mediterranean Oil potato chips in a room full of Italian chefs. It's  an acquired taste, and until you chance...

Photo property of La Cumparsita Tango Bar Sunshine beams white through stripes of blue in the city of Buenos Aires, where airport staff commence year's end by hammering hand drums inside the terminal, where taxi drivers tile the car with dreams of race cars, family, Jesus, and—if you dig hard enough—nearly naked women, where your problem will never be someone else's problem, where you can't find dinner at 8 p.m. because it's still too early to open, where lane lines on the street only matter as much as the cop beside you.    Buenos Aires gushes like the falls of Iguazú above, like the Río de la Plata beside it. Whether tarnished, faded, or fraying, the flag is found on every corner, above groups of friends who sip mate together and pretend not to notice the Americano walking past them. T he birthplace of tango—dance's most pornographic form, where adroit hands delicately crawl and dance and flick along shoulders. A sudden flash of thigh disappears before an...

This story can be purchased and downloaded from SmashWords here . I met Marzanna at a party intended to help foreigners make connections abroad. She was drinking at the bar with a man who appeared to be from Uruguay, though his nametag showed a flag of the United States. We shared stories of our experiences and impressions of Uruguay, drawing comparisons of the major differences between our homes and this South American variant of western ideology. Within minutes of conversation, I was introduced to a diverse array of Marzanna's ex-boyfriends. These included foreigners, millionaires, transsexuals, and pathological liars. The foremost of these was her late ex, who had died after 4 bed-ridden vegetative years. Marzanna had visited him every day until his unexpected exit. "I had to get away from there," she said, with a tone and demeanor reminiscent of what I felt upon leaving Utah. Like me, Marzanna had come to Uruguay seeking greener pastures - not because life would be ...

A few years ago, the study of English changed my life. During the 19th century, Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss instructor of linguistics (commonly known as the father of modern linguistics), taught a pivotal course in clarifying the general operations of human language and, consequently, a general course in existentialism. In brief (if at all possible), Saussure detailed the arbitrary nature of language. Take a look at the following word: run. Run is a combination of a vowel and two consonants, three letters from the Latin alphabet, possessing a single syllable. This small word also contains many, many different meanings. In fact, according to New York Times author Simon Winchester, in his article, “‘Run,’ a Verb for Our Frantic Times,” the word run contains no fewer than 645 meanings, making it #1 of words with the most meanings. Of what did you think upon first seeing this word? Did you think of going for a run? A running computer? A test run? Running out of ideas? Running a ris...

Today, I watched this video. Please take a minute and view it yourself. Oh man. What a tear jerker, huh? Here's this husband and father, Troy, who just can't help but want to see attractive, naked people in the act of sex. This is because, "...the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord..." (The Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19). Let's recap here: the reason Troy is such a fallen man is because his natural self is God's enemy, and that natural self is what desires the viewing of acts of sex by others. Letting alone the various other "natural man" tendencies which God must hate (the desire to eat, sleep, have companionship, etc.), let's examine what constitutes an addiction to pornography. In this talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of t...