Do you have your movie passes for the Breaking Dawn midnight premiere?

OMG! It’s only 5 weeks until Twilight Breaking Dawn is released to theaters! Aren’t you stoked, too? I can’t wait. I mean, as a grown-up and middle-aged adult there is nothing quite like geeking out over a movie about PUBESCENT vampires and werewolves pining over puppy love. Who doesn’t love melancholic teens fretting over immortality, fetal development, and gang alliances? (oh, yes I did).

Now, why all the vitrol for this modern gothic love story? Because it raises questions close to my own heart. It’s taken me a while to figure out the next highly likely truth, but this one could be one of the most important for long term individual and couple bliss. Here it is: you need to screen your potential mates for their taste and appreciation for art and entertainment. Without being an excessively pretentious windbag (oh s**t, too late for that!), let’s just say that I think that art and entertainment are so very important--they define our culture and humanity (take that VAMPIRES!). They provide richness to our daily lives, to our experience. A life devoid of art and entertainment is a life undiscovered, a life unfulfilled.

Let’s face it, you’re going to spend a long time with your mate—a lot of nights at home watching TV or listening to music or whatever. You could kill your brain cells nightly watching Two and a Half Men or some sentimental-crap drama (hello every drama on ABC!), or you could explore interesting comedy and drama, and learn a little about life and love and heartbreak and all of that “stuff.”

I’m not suggesting that you need to spend your date nights in museums (not a bad idea occasionally, at least)—you might spend most of your entertainment time outdoors enjoying the art of nature and living adventure, and that’s cool. But for goodness sakes, try to find some art and entertainment that force you to move beyond your comfort zone and challenge your understanding of the world and beauty.

I feel like my best experiences in life have come from encounters with art and the very best have been shared with my spouse. I think that a large part of our happiness comes from our ability to share those moments—we have similar taste and that facilitates our growth together as a couple and as individuals.

Just like you can’t be happy married to someone who is much smarter or dumber than you, the same goes for art and entertainment (if that hits close to home, well, you’re stuck now so make the best of it). You won’t really be happy married to a bumpkin who likes country music and Transformers movies if you are a classical music, Shakespeare fanatic. You can be content, but you’re highly unlikely to get the full potential of what a marriage can afford you. There’s nothing like talking about the pain of losing true love and your husband replying “I know! Just like when Optimus Prime has to sacrifice the Autobots, it totally sucked!"

Now grant me a minute here to “hate” on Twilight and explain something important: How seriously could you take an adult man who waited in line with his male buddies to watch the midnight premiere of the Hannah Montana movie or who couldn’t wait to see Selena Gomez in concert? You wouldn’t and you couldn’t—plus, it’s creepy. And guess what adult, MARRIED women— it’s creepy that you’re on Team Jacob or Team Edward. You’re a closet pedophile—ok, that’s over the line (maybe).

But that’s not to say that you can’t have GUILTY PLEASURES. Actually, guilty pleasures are very important to having a refined appreciation for art and entertainment. Guilty pleasures keep us from being pretentious, snobbish, archaic, uninteresting, and stunted. Guilty pleasures bring us joy and happiness. They are silly, and lowbrow. Guilty pleasures allow us to join broader conversations about what’s going on in pop culture. But knowing the birthdates of all the Kardashians is definitely pointless—you could fill your empty head with a few brighter facts and ideas. But every yin needs at least a little yang. Keep them legal--no Beiber posters please!

Guilty pleasures have to be exactly that—an occasional diversion. Some guilty pleasures we enjoy with our friends; some you should probably keep to yourself—like this: last week I sat at my piano and jammed out to Katy Perry’s “ET”. I love teeny pop like Katy, Britny, and any other bimbo with a “y” at the end of her name. But that’s not what I primarily listen to and play. And I’m not proud of my teen pop love. It’s my occasional diversion.

And so that I’m not accused of being a sexist pig, let me be clear that plenty of men have stupid guilty pleasures. I can identify a big one with 10 little letters—VIDEO GAMES. Seriously men, you should never admit to having played a video game without a child holding one of the controllers after you turn 25. You may still enjoy them—but you shouldn’t because you’re now a grown up and that makes it a guilty pleasure.

Thank heavens my wife has a very similar taste quotient (TQ) and her guilty pleasures are all ok with me and I think that my guilty pleasures are ok with her.

So, any of you brave enough to post on Facebook your Guilty Pleasure?

Welcome to this blog!

Howdy folks,

This blog is dedicated to sharing some thoughts about LDS life and culture. Let's address a couple of ground rules. The things that you will read in the following pages are not sanctioned by the leadership of the Church. I'm not trying to represent what Mormons believe or anything else like that. I'm trying to share some thoughts that you might find entertaining. I like to be just a little sarcastic and I think that I am an equal opportunity abuser/offender. But the point of this blog is to just throw it out there.

New Years Eve

We didn't get to go out on New Year's Eve with some friends (we only had a babysitter in the afternoon. Although we did get to see True Grit which was pretty good). So, in order to pass the time between Ryan Seacrest's banal New Years banter, I spent some time at the keyboard, microphone, and computer. I thought this song was fun, especially with the "poetic license". This was really quite funny at 1 am... it's still funny, right?

This is a special highly likely Christmas truth

More on the Christmas truth

Sorry to all of our friends that I've now offended, but I had been trying to write that song myself. In the spirit of the song, I'd like to publish our family letter now:

Dear Friends,

This year has just been so much fun and action packed. We're sorry that we haven't been able to see you as much as we would like, but we've been really busy being a happier and more productive family than yours. Of couse, we'll fill you in on the all of the details.

Will, our hardworking breadwinner, not only impressed his boss and earned a major promotion and raise, he also discovered a cure for 3 types of cancer. And while that was a source of personal pride, he feels like his real accomplishment was rescuing 64 orphans from an orphanage in Mongolia. You see, he was able to teach the local Mongol famers how to produce a larger crop, so now those farmers can raise enough crops to feed their entire families and keep their children. But you'd hardly know it (unless you visit his Facebook, MySpace, Blogspot, or Twitter feeds...).

Melissa, our domestic diva, has been a busy housewife and mother. First, she was able to expand and include a small field of wheat, so we now can GROW and GRIND our own wheat. Next year she hopes to add a crop of quinoa. After that, she took some time to complete her PhD in astrophysics--it's been a hobby that she just wanted to put to bed for once and for all. Thanks to some self study, she made some discoveries and made some real progress on our geneaology. We're now tracked back 31 generations; not where she wants it to be, but she's confident that she'll get farther after she makes her visits to Ireland, Romania, and Iran to visit geneaology and antiquities libraries.

Ethan turned 8 and was baptized. He is really enjoying school. He has taken a likening to mathematics and after a little effort, was able to provide the proof for the Poincare Conjecture (it earned him a nomination for the Nobel Prize for Mathematics). Instead of a birthday party, he asked if we could donate a bunch of toys to a local shelter.

Madeliene really out did herself this year. Not only was she accepted to the National Ballet Academy, but she earned early admission to BYU, Yale, and Stanford. How she ever found time to volunteer to clean wild fowl who have been harmed by oil spills is beyond us!

Ashley turned 3 and really blossomed. After she finished reading Charlotte's Web all by herself, she informed the family that we are no longer eating pork--what a cutie! After her piano recital at Symphony Hall in Phoenix (where she played a Mozart and an Ashley-composed concerto), she led the family down the local blood bank for a family donation. She gave a whole pint!

Jacob may be the last in the family, but he is not the least. This year he learned to walk, play the Wii and become a Guitar Hero star. He enjoyed the music playing so much, we bought him a tiny violin and set him loose. While he can read music, he prefers to play by ear or compose his own songs...

We hope that all is well with you. You know that it will be well for us!

Truth #5 about dating and marriage for YM

There are about 184 reasons not to get married...

there are also about 34 reasons why you should get married (you're waiting to hear them, aren't you; well, I will reveal all 218 in another post). Today we will discuss one of the more useful reasons for getting married, although you may not be able to appreciate it until you're much older. Basically young man, this post is coming from your older, future self, visiting from 40 or 50 years down the road. I'm going to channel the best advice from your older self (I'll force him to stay on topic, not use "mission" stories to illustrate his point, etc.).

Your future self wants you to know that you need to get married to help you shut up (at least sometimes). The unfortunate highly likely truth is that because you have are a male, you have an innate ability and strong desire to say stupid, offensive things. You feel compelled to make asinine comments about others; you want to blurt out objectionable and innappropriate comments (usually involving sex, sex organs, sexual innuendo, the other guy's mother, etc); you can't seem to stop yourself from egging on some one you are fighting with--if it was up to you, you'd keep arguing with that other guy even though it might very well result in you having a bunch of kidney bruises and a broken jaw. Heck, when you're really mad, you want to keep making inciting, infuriating comments even though you know that you may end up in the local prison lock-up next to a mexican drug lord that muled some kilos of crack across the border in some poor illegal immigrant's colon. Somewhere, deep within the folds of your brain there is some spot that generates this idiotic behavior and for some reason, it all seems like reasonable behavior (due to whoreosterone, perhaps?).

Sure, through some training (primary and young mens program), self mastery, and some healthy fear of pain and humiliation, you've learned how to control yourself to a generally respectable degree. But like drug addict, you're always just one bad line away from getting into trouble. When you're a youth or early teenager, this problem isn't much of a problem. You generally spend your time with other stumbling, bumbling kids who aren't much of a problem/threat and incidents are usually quickly forgetten.

But now you're starting to enter into real adulthood. Some very important things are starting to happen and these things have much longer term consequences. You're trying to find a mate. You're trying to start a career. You're trying to create circle of friends and acquaintances who will form the community in which your children will be raised.

You need to realize that getting into a fight now involves terms like "battery" and "assault", and means possible jail time (not suspension from junior high school). You need to realize that teasing your friend's sister with she is a "fat cow" when you're 11 is much different than making the same remark to Sister Warner. It's one thing to make a comment like, "man, you're girfriend is hot"; it's totally different when you say "man, you're wife has nice legs". You need to appreciate that you'll be living among adults who can choose to alienate you...

This is especially true in your dating relationships and marriage. As you grow comfortable with you're partner, it's easy to relax and let the full force of your natural personality come out. But that's when you need to exercise even more restraint, otherwise life will be not so happy. Let's look at a few helpful examples:

1) You're watching the 2nd game of a double header of college football. You're wife asks you if it would be all right for her to leave the kids with you and go to a Pampered Chef party. After she finally gets your attention, your first thought is to say something like, "Hey that sounds like a good idea; an equally brilliant idea would be for me to insert an ice pick in my eye and spend $70 buying decoupage for the garage. Either way, I'll be more poor and still hungry..." While you are congratulating yourself on remembering the word "decoupage" (although you still don't know what it is), you're wife is quietly making a mental note to "have a headache" for the next 2 months.

2) Your girlfriend takes you to a clothing store. She wants to find some new pants. In an obvious attempt to get a compliment and be a little flirty, she asks you how her butt looks in a particular pair of jeans. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong pair for this analysis. Your natural inclination may be to say something like "You know, I appreciate the fact that you're not trying to attract other men now that we are dating. Really, I think that you look more and more like the mother of my future children every day now." Before you can get out "I was just making a joke" your girlfriend is texting your roommate to see if he wants to go out next weekend.

Both of these situations had easy responses--"Yes dear. That's great." True, not very creative and definitely not very witty, but very effective and safe. You have to realize that you are highly likely to ruin a good thing with your mouth. Your wife won't mind you buying the NBA package on DirectTV when you choose to not mock her Pampered Chef party. You won't have to go to "Twilight" or "New Moon" to meet girls and hopefully get a girlfriend if you can hold back the sarcasm (warning--there are a lot of married moms at those types of movies, so be careful who you choose to sit next to...).

But let's get to the fact of the matter. Your wife is pretty forgiving. You're likely to be on good behavior while you're dating. But you're highly likely to say something stupid to another grown up. That's why you need to get married. You need to have a help meet you can elbow you just before you tell Julie Healy "Well, if my wife doesn't keep me happy, if you know what I mean, then I'm gonna find me a little sugar somewhere else" because, even though you don't know it, Julie's husband just told her 2 months ago that he had an affair. You need to have someone to help you filter your anger and frustration. Before you march on over to So-and-So's house and tell them off, you can have her listen to your "brilliant" insult and then direct you to the couch and TV remote. A good wife knows when you to coax you out of a conversation and room (using her feminie wiles, if necessary) to prevent you from making some incredibly stupid remark. Having your wife present at the church softball game will make you much less likely to tell the opposing ward's bishop that "your momma's like a vacuum cleaner..." after he tags you late but insists you're out.

Heck, she may even be able to convince you not to post your stupid ramblings in a blog...

Truth #5 for YW about dating & marriage

…or are you just happy to see me?

Hopefully dears, your mothers have already had the "Birds and the Bees" talk with you; if not, then you need to find a friend or relative that has “known man” to give you the 411. This infamous discussion—how it might have happened to you, what you should do for your daughters and sons—deserves its very own post. Today, we’ll give you some insight into your love life as a married woman, and more specifically, your lover.

Ahhh intimacy—it’s a delicate matter. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get into anything nasty. Just some basic biology you should know. During this post, I’ll usually reference the subject matter as “intimacy” instead of “sex”. I like the word “sex”; I like the way it sounds; I also like how the word makes my fellow mormons uncomfortable (there are adults who have “known” the opposite gender and spawned many children yet are made uncomfortable by the word “sex”). But I’m here to educate, so we’ll use “intimacy” so we don’t get distracted!

The highly likely truth about your husband-to-be is that he is a whore. No, he’s not a prostitute who works a street corner in a shady part of town. But he has a one-track mind and he’s willing to do just about anything in exchange for “intimacy”. Ok….so maybe he’s a monogamous slut with a firm commitment to family values. Anyways, he’s a machine, a simple computer program no “0”, just lots of “1” (had to slip in at least one Freudian euphemism!). But fear not, he isn’t depraved or kinky, he hasn’t been molested as child, etc. He just has a very strong, natural intimacy drive—and it’s the result of biology. It’s even part of the Plan of Salvation!

You see, the man you will marry has an X and a Y chromosome (you are hopefully XX). What that means is that he has a whole half of his brain dedicated to being creative (the right half). The male right half of the brain is very good at being imaginative—his brain thinks about ways to woo you, he can envision how you might look in certain underwear, he can dream endlessly about things to “do” with you after said wooing, etc. He is so good at being creative, that he is able to be creative all the time, he never tires of it—when he’s awake, when he’s asleep, when you’re pregnant, even when you’re enjoying the fruits of your monthly cycle. He will be creative even when he’s dead (or you’re dead, too).

This half of the brain is so effective and powerful that it has the will power necessary to get him to overcome many aspects of his rational left brain. It can get him to ignore the rational left brain’s pleadings of “For the love of all things manly, either turn off Grey’s Anatomy or walk out of the room now!!! You're becoming sensitive and maybe gay!!!” Even when his rational brain is screaming, “There is no right answer. Yes, these pants do make her butt look fat and she knows it, but you can’t win because if you say that it doesn’t make her butt look fat, then she’ll know you’re lying to her. But if you say yes, then you’re an insensitive jerk. WHY ARE WE CLOTHES SHOPPING? Isn’t there some athletic event on one of the 26 ESPN channels? HOW DID YOU LET US GET INTO THIS PREDICAMENT? Don’t frown, don’t frown, STOPPP!—you’re giving your thought away!!! Oh crap, we’re going down in flames!!!!....”

While his left brain is panicking, his right brain is exerting a powerful calming influence. It makes him realize that while he hates doing certain things, he needs to do them to keep you happy, and as a very important side benefit, makes him much more likely to get lucky sometime soon. It’s a symbiotic relationship that keeps the universe in harmony. You may be frustrated to learn that his “desire” to go shopping with you or watch a chic flick is a calculated decision. Sorry, it’s highly likely that he doesn’t really like watching High School Musical (you know that stupid grin he gets on his face when he tells you that movie was a lot of fun? That's him being “creative” about Vanessa Hudgens or Ashley Tisdale). You may feel deceived that he didn’t really like going to Hobby Lobby with you. Don’t feel this way. He’s not lying to you, he’s just internally conflicted and I’m letting you in on the secret. Without the two halves of the brain working in this fashion, happy marriages as we know them would not be possible.

Compounding the brain issue, your husband has some body parts (ask your mother) that produce whore-osterone. It produces great quantities of it, all the time. While you have your monthly friend that comes and goes, your husband’s hormone cycle last 25/8, 366. The whore-osterone causes him to operate like an animal (like we told you in a previous chapter, he is a mindless predator—think great white shark like in the movie Jaws). Whore-osterone is the force driving this powerful cycle= Eat, poop, sleep, procreate, eat, poop, sleep procreate, etc… Whore-osterone is also the juice that powers his right brain activity.

Now, not all men have brains and bodies developed exactly the same. Some of more right brain than others, some have less whore-osterone. That means that you can find a man whose personality and intimacy needs fit with yours. You have to think long term. So, part of your courtship should involve investigating your boyfriend’s intimacy proclivities. I’m not saying you need to have “intimacy” prior to marriage or that you should ask him directly (see the paragraph above about left brain-right brain negotiations). As a Molly and Normon, who are highly likely to not have real physical intimacy prior to marriage, you’ll have to do some guess work. But you should get a sense of what he is like. Because remember, like a shark (a mindless predator that hasn’t evolved mentally in millions of years) you’re husband is not highly likely to change after you get married. He may never change.

So what are you driving at, you ask? You see, you’re highly likely to think like this about intimacy during your courtship and early marriage: “Wow, this guy is great and he thinks that I am great. He wants to grab me and kiss me every time we’re together and this is exciting so I’ll happily kiss him all the time….Wow, we’re married and we can be “intimate” now and he is sooo looking forward to this and I want him to be happy, so I’ll be intimate with him lots…Ok, being intimate is so overrated, I really thought that he’d get over it, it’s been 13 months…Thank heavens I’m nursing and can use that excuse to get him off of me….Maybe if I get really fat he’ll finally leave me alone, I mean we’re forty and he’s still after me like we just got to the hotel after the ceremony…”

See? He’s never going to change. So you should find a partner who has an intimacy level that is compatible. If you want a happy husband, you’ll need to find a good match. Don’t just figure that you can lure him in with the steamy girlfriend bait and then turn into the ice queen after you have a ring on your finger. Besides being cruel, you could cause him to have a psychotic break. Remember, he’s constantly having right brain—left brain negotiations and having that work out to some degree keeps him sane. Making him a “monk” will cause his brain to go haywire. You could crush his soul and drive him into the arms of another woman. He might decide to hunt year round. He might become so effeminate that he develops breast cancer. He might turn gay. Can you really ignore these dangerous side effects by trying to defy a biological reality? It’s highly likely to be bad for your marriage.