Sober, You're Old and Ugly

Bush's final State of the Union speech called for a drinking game.

Take a drink when:
*He says "Iraq"
*He says "economy"
*He mispronounces something
*Someone is shown sleeping
*A candidate is shown
*One side claps or stands but the other side does not
*Miscellaneous instance requiring a drink, approved by the rules committee

These rules underestimated the number of times these things would actually happen. I needed a new beer 20 minutes into it and eventually gave up. This game was a bold ambition, I admit. Sometimes you bite the bar, and sometimes the bar bites you.

The New York Times has a comprehensive graphic charting the words Bush has said in all of his State of the Union addresses. I will have to check with our official committee stenographer, because I somehow remember drinking to "economy" a bunch more times than reflected in the graphic. Perhaps it's because we included "economic" under the economy umbrella.

Bush, Facing Woes in '08, Focuses on War and Taxes [New York Times]

Survey question
You get a break today. Happy Primary Day!

Promises of Eternity

"The more people come to know us, the better they will understand us... We're a little different. We don't smoke. We don't drink. We do things in a little different way. That's not dishonorable. I believe that's to our credit."
--Gordon B. Hinckley, in an interview with The Associated Press in late 2005

Well, depends on which circles you run in, but yeah, I guess that's true.

I owe a huge debt to Gordon B. Hinckley. Because, without him, the Mormon church probably wouldn't have grown as it has in the past 12 years. Without that growth, PBS would probably have not dedicated two nights to a documentary about the Mormon church. Without that documentary, my friends and I would not have conceived the greatest drinking game. Ever.

Every time someone says "Joseph Smith," you take a drink. Which gets tough for quotes like this one:
"It's unfair in part because you really can't blame Joseph Smith for what a man like Warren Jeffs does abusing a 14-year-old girl almost two centuries after Smith himself died. There is no direct connection between these people and Joseph Smith. Blaming Smith in particular or Mormonism in general for ongoing Fundamentalist polygamists is like blaming Karl Marx for communist China."

And by the time she gets to communist China, you're too buzzed to grasp her point.

But the best part comes from a sweet former drug addict:
"They came in and told me the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life: about this white boy, a dead angel and some gold plates. And I thought, I wonder what they're on?"
Why I Am A Mormon [PBS]

So, really, my tie to Hinckley has nothing to do with his warm personality, or his changes within the church. Neigh, his expanding the church as if they were Wal-Marts warranted the attention of PBS and for that, I spend most of the summer talking about "the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life."

I think you are an alien being
This excerpt from The Trail was particularly telling to me:
"At a photo-op in front of a Texaco gas station here, scheduled so Romney could blast rival John McCain's proposal for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, Romney addressed his relationship with Gordon B. Hinckley, the Mormon church's president who died yesterday of natural cases at age 97. Romney called Hinckley 'one of the great leaders in our faith.'"
Romney, Remembering Gordon Hinckley [The Trail on WashingtonPost.com]

A "great leader" whose death spells the end of your avoidance of your Mormonism in public. At a time when you'd want the evangelicals to forget about that.

Survey question
If you lived a life without smoking, caffeine and alcohol, which part would be the hardest?

For me, it would be caffeine. I do enjoy alcohol, but I've been able to go a while without it. But I was able to do that because I had a bunch of Cokes and coffees. No coffee and I fade away like Yoda.

I Was Born

I decided I wanted a new blog.

The problem is that the type of blog I'd probably have would address music, movies, books, pop culture, politics, headlines and a variety of other things already in other blogs whose authors probably know more than I do.

I've decided to bite the bullet anyway and give in despite the fact that I know this blog will be pretentious, self-righteous and self-referential. What you read from here on might be topical, but it will definitely be random and stream-of-conscience. Guaranteed.

In other words, it will read like a lot of other blogs that mention movies, music, politics and current events.

A couple other blog concepts I was batting around:

Adopt-A-Child-Laborer: I would post pictures of child laborers and give you the chance to bid on them. This would have been difficult because of language barriers to say nothing of international commerce. Though I imagine that such a Web site could have kept those foreign markets a tad more stable.

Forget The Writers, I'm Writing My Own Show: I would write my own episodes of the shows affected by the strike. I'm not saying they'd be accurate, but it would be nice to see McDreamy with his balls back. And an episode with Bernie Getz as himself.

Ask a Meth Addict: Similar to "Ask A Black Dude" on "Chappelle's Show," this feature would allow the public to ask questions of strangers. These strangers, however, would be tweaking on homemade crank. Scheduling interviews between social worker visits and unmentionable acts would have been difficult and thus that blog is not meant to be. For now, anyway.

So, with those ideas unable to come to fruition, I'm stuck with the established format of so many other blogs: randomly posting thoughts about a variety of things that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. All written in the style of whichever writer I'm obsessed with that day.

Survey question
If you got to watch a movie with a presidential candidate, which candidate would you pick and which movie would you watch?

So far, I've considered:
Hillary Clinton, "Dolemite"
Mike Huckabee, "Caligula"
Mitt Romney, "The Secret"
John McCain, "Saw"

Unfortunately, I can't think of a good movie to watch with Obama. Maybe "Mean Girls" or "Terms of Endearment."