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Eight Hours of Recommended Reading
(But only if you're really slow.)
- PETA: The Worth of Animal Souls Is Great
- Celestial Roulette
- My Body is a Private Club for Members
- Label Maker
- The Fear of God and Spiders
- You Must Be Smoking
- Caffeine: The Devil's in the Drip
Eight Hours Worth
of other Blogs
I've been to too many blogs to list them all in this column, but you can see the list here.
At Least Eight Hours Worth of Podcasts I'm Not Supposed to Like:
May 2006
- My Body is a Private Club for Members
- A New Milestone
- Current Terror Alert Level
- Label Maker
- Reason #67 Why My Kid is Cuter Than Yours
- The Fear of God and Spiders
- Government Research Project
- How to Earn My Business
- Derob M'i Dog
- How I Know Google is the One True Search Engine
- Membership Drive Results
My Body is a Private Club
for Members
Wedesday, May 31, 2006
10:50PM
Several nights ago I found my dad working intently on the computer. I could see just enough of the screen to know exactly what he was writing. “My body is a temple, and you don’t have a recommend.”
I squirmed. The huge, flowery, cursive letters only exaggerated the silliness of it all. From what I can gather, he was preparing for some church lesson that I really don’t want to know about.
Growing up LDS, I was taught that premarital sex was second only to murder in God’s eyes. On that same scale, I’d guess masturbation was somewhere on par with beating someone into bloody unconsciousness with a baseball bat. (Only I guess it’d be more like knocking yourself out).
Now then. I have a pretty fair idea of the type of readers this site attracts. I’d be willing to bet most of you would argue that these “second-place” sins are actually…well…a lot of fun! If that’s true, imagine how much fun you’ll have when you actually do kill someone!
If this image makes you uncomfortable, you're part
of
the problem. If this image makes you excited (and you’re
not a giraffe),
you should leave. Now.
I do have a question though. If sex actually is second only to murder, then why are people so willing to tolerate violence in their entertainment? Would the world really be worse off if we swapped all violence straight across for safe premarital sex? Hell, for that matter, would it be worse if we just swapped violence for beer? Oh wait! How about beer and sex? YEAH!
In spite of my strict Victorian upbringing, I have to say my wife and I are well over the hang-ups. We’ve enjoyed many evenings watching our Sex in the City DVDs. While I’m sure she enjoys the show a little more than I do, I think we both enjoy the guilty pleasure. (That and I know that it can lead to a little Sex in the Suburbs).
***
Update: Heidi was kind enough to point out that it's Sex and the City. Not in. I've seen four seasons and never noticed. Isn't that just like a guy though? After Sex my brain just shuts down.
Image credit: David White, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, United Kingdom
A New Milestone
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
11:53AM
I’m very proud to announce that Eight Hour Lunch has officially received it’s first negative feedback! In fact, I'm so proud that I'm going to reproduce it in it's entirety here. The comment was in response to the my post entitled "Dulling Occom’s Razor."
After long and careful analysis of my position, MJ Rackley (location and Web site unknown), came to this thought-provoking conclusion:
“I'm not impressed.”
Well I am. Amazing how much you can say with so little, isn’t it? Thank you for your most insightful insightfulness. I think we have our next nomination for the Weenie Awards.
Current Terror Alert Level
May 25, 2006
8:17AM
I saw this earlier this morning and just had to share.
Too funny. Follow the link to see the other levels.
Label Maker
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
10:54PM
In today’s world, labeling people has become an unforgivable sin. Never mind that sometimes labels can be good. We’ve sacrificed clarity to spare people’s feelings. It has gotten to the point that Johnny can’t even be smart anymore. His classmates just need improvement. Because they’re stupid. And now I need to repent to the amorphous god some call Society.
In an attempt to better align myself with Society and forsake labeling, I’ve adopted a wonderful new hobby: name-calling. Yes, I realize there are those who may claim that there is no difference and that I’m going to hell. That’s because they are a bunch of thumb-sucking bed-wetters who have never had sex.
I get most of my name-calling practice as I drive to work each day. Lately, however, I’ve discovered there is a goldmine in the entertainment industry. Let me show you:
Sir Ian McKellen: Stud. Anyone with enough balls to tell America that the Bible needs a disclaimer because it’s fiction is ok with me. Besides, he’s a knight and a wizard. Who’s going to fuck around with someone like that?
Pauly Shore: Irredeemable sick pervert. In fact he may be one of the few truest, sickest, perverts alive. Everyone else just thinks they are because of their religious baggage.
Tom Cruise: Nut. Sure, he’s a good enough actor, but he should consider changing his name. Filbert Cruise. Tom Almond. Pecan Sam. Coo-Coo Cashew.
Christina Aguilera: Talented and trashy. I mean that as a compliment. And I don’t even like most of her music. She’s what Brittney Spears would be if she suddenly learned to sing, got a makeover, stopped binge-drinking, stopped smoking and stopped dropping her baby instead of her cocktail.
Chuck Norris: Dork. But a dork that can kick my ass. Sir.
Ben Folds: Genius. Period.
George Bush, Jr.: Traitor. Zealot. Idiot. Coked-out retard. Freedom-hating-first-cousin-bred son-of-a-bitch (I’m holding back). I don’t have enough room on this site to list the reasons why. Besides, if you’re one of the fifteen people in the U.S. that still approves of his performance, you probably wouldn’t get it. Why don’t we just save some money and put a fence around him?
Bill Clinton: Creative. I mean you’ve got to hand it to him. Sure, he wasn’t the best president ever. Then again, it never would have occurred to me to use tobacco like that.
So now that you have an idea of what I’ve been practicing, there’s one more label I’d like to share with you. The word is weenie. Somewhere between a lurp and a dweeb, you know a weenie from the moment you encounter them. It’s almost as if some giant supernatural hand reached down from the heavens and stamped it on their genes, and no other name will quite do.
On the inside, weenies are a lot like the sausage. No one understands why they continue to be so popular and they’re completely full of themselves. Weenies nearly always have very long, successful careers. In fact they never seem to go away. They put on the tough guy show, but always come off unbelievably wimpy. Worst of all, women love them.
Ladies and gentlemen (but mostly gentlemen), I give you the Weenie Hall of Fame.
The Reluctant Mascot
Bryan Adams: Your voice sucks and I hate your guitar work. You may have played it till your fingers bled, but they didn’t bleed enough.
Don Johnson: Aw hell, where do I start? The permanent six-o’clock shadow didn’t make you look cool. It made you look homeless.
The Guy Who Wrote the Weenie Song: You know why.
The Dallas Cowboys: This goes for all of them, and their fans, forever, in both directions. If you think cowboys are all about kicking ass, then you obviously haven't seen Brokeback Mountain. The cheerleaders are fine though. Keep it up girls!
Kevin Bacon and Kenny Loggins: If seeing Kevin Bacon dancing in the Lehi Roller Mills. doesn’t make you want to gouge out your eyes and puke at the same time, the lame music should put you over the edge. In fact, you two are so bad you get a new category. The Footlong Award.
I humbly beseech the forgiveness of our Lord and Savior, Society, if I have offended him. I mean her. Damn! I meant to say “It’s Holiness”. If it pleases you. I mean Thee! Sigh.
And now, I open the polls for your nominations. Just remember, if your name happens to come up, try not to feel too bad. At least you're not a dick.
Reason #67 Why My Kid is Cuter Than Yours
Thursday, May 18, 2006
10:38PM
"I'm a lizaaarrd baaaybeeeee, so why doncha kill meeeee..."
The Fear of God and Spiders
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
10:28PM
Last week at lunch, someone I know and for whom I have tons of respect told someone else I equally respect, "You're more ex-Mormon than I am Mormon."
Now, I usually hate to guess at meanings, but it seemed to imply, or
it at least reminded me of a familiar saying in the LDS church. “People
leave the church, but they can’t leave it alone”. Let me
tell you, it's not as easy as that.
This morning on the way out to my car I walked through a spider web.
With both of my hands full, all I could do was curse under my breath
and fight my impulse to scream or gag as the invisible sticky threads
draped themselves across my hands and face.
Long after the web was gone, I found myself brushing the imaginary cords from my body. I hate spiders. When I walk through a web, I wish I could just brush off and immediately forget it. But I can't. Even looking at pictures of them tightens my throat and turns my stomach.
In South America, the spiders don't shit around. Ok they do sometimes, but only when they’re done eating. Eating babies. One such spider there that I found particularly frightening was the banana spider.
My first encounter with a banana spider was in Milagro, Ecuador. My roommate and I had just finished dinner after a long day of work and were starting to clear the dishes in our dimly lit kitchen. As we began, I saw something uninvited and hairy dart out from under the sink and into the center of the room.
With the force of an explosion, a wave of panic drew an uncrossable line down the center of the tiny room. On one side sat an arachnid about the size of a silver dollar (it was a baby). In the other corner on a chair stood two otherwise manly 20-year old missionaries, broom in hand and screaming like girls.
Now before you laugh too hard, there are a few things you should know about banana spiders. First, they are poisonous. We didn’t know this at the time, but we weren’t taking any chances. Next, and perhaps most disturbing, they are lightning fast and can be very aggressive. It took us several minutes to obliterate the hideous intruder without actually stepping on it.
Once we were confident the beast would never move again, we cleaned it up and wrapped up our day. And with that, I pretty much forgot about banana spiders until about a month later in a different city when I nearly touched one slightly larger than my hand by accident. Perhaps the only miracle of my mission is that I didn’t experience a personal brown out right there in front of everyone.
My mildly harrowing experience was at most five minutes at the end of just one of about 670 days in which I worked without financial compensation, for 12 hours every day. For a church that turned out to be not at all what I had spent two years telling people it was. I reached my conclusion after twenty-seven years. That's approaching 10,000 days of my life. That's a hell of a lot of time to live a lie and just "leave the church alone".
I can't. And I’m not sorry. Why should I be? From early in my childhood, I was taught to fear and respect spiders, God and hell. It shaped who I am. It's my life. Do you understand? Are you even trying? It’s mine! After all I’ve been through, I refuse to allow a church I don't even believe in anymore wrap me up in a cocoon of silence so they can slowly finish sucking the life out of me.
So I’ll keep brushing webs off my face after they’re gone. And I'll talk about my fucking mission. I'll read "anti" Mormon books. And I’ll keep writing things here that I hope will make people think. There’s only one thing anyone could possibly do to stop me. Prove me wrong. After all, if it is true and you know it, I couldn’t ask for a better gift.
Government Research Project
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
10:48AM,
This morning, I have the unique opportunity to work on a new piece of military weapons research. For the short term, its working name is the Fecal Launch Unit (FLU).
Unlike conventional weapons, the FLU incapacitates its users with an unpredictable series of short and long bursts, leaving the operator weak and dehydrated. As a secondary side-effect, I’ve noticed that it also makes people sick who read about it. (Sorry).
Ugh. I’m going back to bed.
How to Earn My Business
Friday, May 6, 2006
8:50PM
We had a couple of checks to deposit today. I was driving, so Heidi put the signed checks and her ID into the tube and had me send it.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Could you please have Heidi lean forward to the camera so that I can verify that it’s her on the driver’s license?”
“Sure.”
“Ma’am, could you please take off your sunglasses and look into the camera so I can see that it’s you? Thanks.”
“Heeeey, that’s neat! While you're at it, do you
think you could get her to take off her shirt?”
Derob M'i Dog
Friday, May 5, 2006
7:01PM
Grateful thoughts
Of sewn discord,
Dealt to those,
In my old ward.
Made my way,
By standing up,
On tired feet,
Refilled my cup.
Ending years of bleak submission,
Discovered joy as my new mission.
How I Know Google is the One True Search Engine
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
9:00PM
Someone searched Google a few days ago for "Beelzebub" and landed here. What more proof do you need?
I kinda wish I could really do this…
Then again, someone got here searching for "rubber horse penis". I'm not quite sure how to interpret that yet. Sorry. No illustrations.
Membership Drive Results
Monday, May 1, 2006
12:50PM
For the three of you who remember the eighthourlunch.com membership drive back in October, it appears to have achieved a modest amount of success:
Apparently I pissed some of you off in January…
I know it's not huge compared to so many of the sites out there, but I'm flattered nonetheless. It's been a long time since I've had such a large audience. I'm just glad you're not all visiting me at my house.
Now if I could just figure out how to get you guys to leave comments…
