Copy and Paste

So, I write posts on my Facebook account that I would like to post here, but you have to retype it instead of copy/pasting it. I suppose that I will have to type it here first and then copy/paste it to facebook.

Just a fun little lunch

So I was able to go have lunch with a girl I dated before my mission. I was wondering how this would go, because I really liked her, but now she is dating someone else, and said that she's going to marry him in the summer break. I am really happy for her, and I have a lot of really good memories with her, and I didn't want to ruin any of that with an awkward lunch, or a fight or something. I believe that awkwardness and bad feelings can be avoided or at least reduced in nearly every case, however, this was the test of that believe that I hold. I am pleased to say that I was supported in my theory by this event. It was pretty fun, almost as if we hadn't had nearly three years of not seeing each other. And she is just as smart, fun and pretty as she ever was. Which is good, because it re-affirms myself that I have pretty good taste, and am able to attract a pretty good catch. So it will happen again, I will find a girl who is amazing and then we will fall in love, but this time we will get married and have a family, and my children will be blessed because I picked a great mom for them. They really only have to worry about me.

I figured it was time to post something to this.

So I just came back from my mission a few weeks ago. I served in the Salt Lake City South mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I loved being there and teaching people about the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I know that he lived, and lives to guide us back to our Father in Heaven, that He lived a perfect life to be the example for us, to give his life to pay for our sins. I know that He restored His Church and Priesthood to the Earth and that He did it through the Prophet Joseph Smith. I also know that Thomas S. Monson is God's living Prophet on the earth today. I know this, because I have had the special witness from the Holy Ghost that it is true. And I know that God will grant to those that ask in faith, the witness that they need to know this also.
I am back at BYU now, yesterday was a historic event. Cardinal Francis George gave an address at the university forum that was amazing. I will have to write my thoughts on it in a future post. I was so excited when I found out that he was comming, and he did not disappoint my excitment. However, I came down with the flu yesterday and am still recovering, and I want to have my full faculties went I write my post on him and his address.
Another effect of my illness was I had to cancel a date I had set up. Most unforunate. She was cute. But I learned a lot about her charactor yesterday. I called her up to cancel the date and she took care of me, drove me home from campus and gave me some soup and sat and talked with me for a bit. I was amazed. I canceled our first date and she was so compassionate. It would be different if we were going steady, then that would be more expected. But I had barely met her on Saturday, ran into her on Sunday and then she was being my own Florence Nightengale on Tuesday. I found out right then that that kind of kindness was what I want my wife to have.
I should probably do a post on the charactoristics that I would like my spouse to have. I will add that to the list of topics.

15th Post

I have been thinking about the factors which make a quality story, and I think that the biggest single factor is not the protagonist but the antagonist. When you get right down to it the good guys are all very similar, they may have different strengths and flaws, but they all try to do what is right most of the time, so if you took, say, Luke Skywalker and Will Turner, and switched them, the stories probably wouldn't change much. Sure, Skywalker isn't a weapon smith, and Turner has no experience with the force, but the Skywalker would go to rescue the girl on the pirate ship and Turner would sign up to pilot an X-wing, because they are the good guys and are bound to try to do the right thing.

However, if one took Vader and switched him with Barbosa, well could you imagine "Sparrow, the force is powerful in you, join me and we can rule the Caribbean" or "the Emperor's decrees are more of guidelines than actual rules."

The thing with villains is they have so many more opportunities to show depth of character, the good guys merely choose good, and really no one needs to know why. But no villain is truly complete without knowing why they do bad things, or if they do something noble, why they did that. They have so much more the opportunity for backstory, indeed they necessitate a backstory, and the better a story is the more we know about its villain, the more we get to sympathize with his pain. The best stories are the ones that have villains who you almost want to have win, and even though you cheer for the victories of the hero, you feel a little bit of regret that the villain had to sustain a loss for its sake.

14th Post

I have recently become interested in a few different TV shows, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Avatar: the Last Airbender.

MST3K is an interesting premise, the show is entirely based on making fun of B-rate movies; every episode has a bad movie for the three main character to roast for its bad effects, writing, and acting. The interesting thing is, the effects MST3K uses are also B-rate. The very existence of the show is almost a commentary on hypocrisy and self-appointed authority, and I find that kind of funny, and I find it kind of sad... but if I comment on my death-dreams I might have to turn myself in for plagiarism... so no mention on how they are the best I've ever had. It is a mad world however...

No deep thoughts on the Airbender, but I also recommend the show, I like epic tales, and have a fascination for worlds created using the four classical elements (or the five oriental elements, really I just like the small-number/rock-paper-scissors effects), and I like the fact that there are no evil characters. I don't mean everyone is good (like Pokemon or Barney or whatever) but the people on either side of the war are people, fully developed characters who are not merely trying to wipe out the other side. I picture the officers of the Fire Nation to be like the officers of the USSR or Nazi Germany, sure, some of them were really bad people, but many of them were being patriotic, or believed their cause correct, and were not necessarily evil people.

Now on another subject, I have realized that even though I consider myself to sufficiently think out my faith and take everything with a grain of doubt, I think that I have an advantage when i comes to having strong faith in my religion. I realize that many people can argue that the majority of Mormons are both complacent and unquestioning in their faith, but I feel that some Mormons try to overcompensate for this. Some people think that they need to be freethinkers, that they need to have more proof than that they grew up in the Church, or that a few missionaries were all that was necessary to sway them. I compare these people to those who wield the sword of truth, and desire their sword to be sharp. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact we are commanded to personally verify revelations for ourselves, but some people need to continue sharpening, they are not satisfied with what they know and they feel they need to be able to refute the doubts which they may encounter. These people are the ones who continue to sharpen their swords, whether to satiated their own insecurity or for their vanity, these people grind their swords to nothing and fall away from the Church when they no longer believe more than doubt, or cannot find a refutation for their current problem. I find it sad, usually they have a "logical" argument to present why they are correct, they do not realise that logic can only prove statements that are contained in the axiom set for the system, and they usually start with a set which does not allow for the Church to be correct, which forces the argument from the beginning. I realized when I was very young that there is no way to prove that this is the true church; I discovered this when my mother told me about the Catholic church that was next door to my ward's building. I asked my mother what the building was, and she said it was a church building, so I asked when it was our ward's turn to use it, and she said that it wasn't an LDS meetinghouse, and then I found out that there are different religions. I assumed that anyone who would go to church in the first place would want to go to God's church, and that not all of the churches out there could be evil, no if there were people who wanted to deliberately lead people away it would be a small number, so it must be that it is hard to prove which one is right, in fact in must not be possible, because once it had been done none of the other religions would exist, and they do exist. Then I heard that God wants us to have faith, and faith is believing in him without having to see him, so God set up the world so it is impossible to prove what our purpose is.
This is where my advantage is in my faith, I do not need God to tell me that this Church is his, because God won't tell us, he isn't going to give us a sign so we can believe, we have to find our faith first, and then we can see miracles, and by understanding this I find strength in my testimony, and other people still need a logical reason.
I am sorry, that was a prideful way to end that thought, but I guess that pride has always been my particular sin, and erasing and rewriting that is merely erasing in my memory the fact that I still have to work in that, and I need reminding, so I won't edit this post.
It is now 3am PST so I should probably say goodbye to this post.

12th Post

I started rebuilding the code that I came up with in 9th grade, I used to be able to write in it nearly as fast as I could write, this is somewhat a depressing set of sentances, but they were the ones that came to me when I wrote this

23801 20820 05401 19801 05000
02090 00091 00880 00050 00000
50090 10025 00049 51250 00000
90200 00122 50004 22013 00000

What? You thought I would tell you the message? Think again.

13th Post

So I figured that it would be a good thing if I moved a few of my posts to an archive. I few friends of mine were doing it, and I caved in to the peer presure, indirect though it might have been.