Bryce Moore's Blog, page 194

Boy Scouts and the LDS Church

In case you missed it yesterday, Boy Scouts voted to end its ban on having openly gay scout leaders. In response to this, the LDS church released a statement, saying that it was troubled by the decision and that

“As a global organization with members in 170 countries, the Church has long been evaluating the limitations that fully one-half of its youth face where Scouting is not available. Those worldwide needs combined with this vote by the BSA National Executive Board will be carefully reviewed by the leaders of the Church in the weeks ahead.”

This is interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, I have a hard time matching the current position of the church (“The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.”) with this statement. If being gay isn’t a sin, then why should it matter if a gay person is leading a scout group? Better yet, even if being gay is a sin, why should it matter?

Is it fear that gay people supervising youth will promote those youth to be gay themselves? But can’t that same logic be applied to anything people want to call a sin? What if someone drinks coffee? Should we allow coffee drinkers to lead LDS scout troops? What if someone is a recovered alcoholic? I guess what I’m saying is that I think the test for “could this person be a good scout leader” should be based on the individual, not on some cookie cutter requirements.

Is it fear that being around openly gay people will make youth more accepting of gay people in general? How is that something to be afraid of, if we’re supposed to be reaching out to all God’s children, as the church’s statement says?

Or maybe it’s fear of the “openly gay” wording. Concern that someone who is actively gay is going to make scouts . . . actively gay? Sorry–I’m just not seeing it again. People who are “openly straight” have been leading troops for decades, and it’s not like those troops have been one big heterosexual orgy night after night. (I’m assuming here. I was never a Scout. More on that in a moment.)

Bottom line for me on this point: the two statements by the Church don’t match up.

However, if the result of all of this is that the Church gets out of Scouting? I’ll be tickled pink. Pleased as punch. Happier than a kitten following a leaky cow. Again, I was never a Scout, so perhaps it’s easier for me to view a world where the Church and Scouting aren’t BFFs, but I’ve never understood the perceived need for Scouting in the Church. It’s portrayed as a divinely-inspired program for our young men, and I don’t see it. Scouting is used by the American wing of the Church, but get outside of the country, and it has nothing to do with it in many many places.

Scouting is expensive. There are a slew of hoops and requirements to jump through to make sure leaders get the stamp of approval, and I see no need for all those trappings. The Young Women’s program has been getting along just dandy without any of it. They have Girl’s Camp, they have weekly activities. They’re just missing the silly handkerchiefs and the strange salutes. (Honestly. Not a fan of all the pomp and circumstance of Scouting. Denisa had plenty of that growing up behind the Iron Curtain, but I’ll bite my tongue and keep that argument out of this for now.)

Don’t get me wrong. I can see how Scouting really helps some youth today, and how it’s helped a lot of church members over the years, but I sincerely believe the Church/Scouting association is a relic of an earlier time. Today’s youth could certain use some “be prepared” action, but it’s not just the boys who need it. The girls need it too. I would love to see the youth program of the Church do much more together, boys with girls. Boys need to know how to cook, clean, sew, etc. just as much as girls need to know how to tie knots, work on cars, light fires, etc. Why do the programs have to be separate, or at least so separate?

But now I’m getting revolutionary, and this isn’t the post for that. I know there are quite a few people up in arms on both sides of this issue. And what it boils down to for me is that I don’t think this ever should have been an issue in the first place.

Then again, I’m still wishing that Mormons had gone all in on Kung Fu instead of Boy Scouts . . .

It’ll be interesting to see where it goes from here, but I’ll be viewing it all as a bystander. I don’t have a dog in this fight, other than a personal preference that the formal Church/Scouting ties be done away with. (So maybe that means I have a dog in this fight after all. Oh well.)

How to Hack Your Facebook Feed

I love me some Facebook. It’s a great way to stay connected with friends and all that. Yay Facebook. But one thing has always frustrated me to no end about it: the inability to have any sort of control over what pops up in my feed. Sure, there’s the option to just hide people altogether (always better than the nuclear option of unfriending them), but other than that, I’ve always been at the whim of the great blue F in the sky as to what I’d see when I logged on.

Thankfully, Facebook just introduced a way to tweak that. Not fix it completely yet, but at least make it much more manageable. I put it to the test last week, and I’ve been quite happy with it so far. And so I’m here to spread the gospel to you find people. You’ll thank me later.

It comes down to this: Facebook now lets you pick 20 friends or pages that you’d like to see first in your feed. First, a bit of background. I have over 600 friends on FB right now. FB typically chooses from among those friends’ posts and puts the ones it thinks will interest me the most onto my feed. The number one thing to do to hack your Facebook feed?

Unfollow people you don’t want to see on your feed.

It’s not personal. You’re not unfriending them. They can still see what you post. You can still head over to their page to see what they posted if you want to. But if you haven’t been unfollowing people on your feed, I guarantee you that there’s a ton of people popping up posting things you just don’t really care about. Think of it this way: if all 600+ of my FB friends followed me around all day, blurting out random facts about their lives? It would be way too chaotic.

So unfollow the ones who post too much stuff you don’t want to see, or who are too obnoxious, or who only post status updates about what their cat is eating.

Unfollowing is easy. When you see someone’s post on your feed that you want to unfollow, look at the top right corner of that post. There’s a little down arrow. Click it, and a menu will appear, with “Unfollow ________” being one of the options. Select that, and you’re done. Now don’t you already feel better?

But beyond this, Facebook has now made it possible to select your BFFs and make sure you always see their posts first when you check Facebook. (You didn’t just unfollow me did you? Of course not. Because you’re reading this to find out how to make sure you always see every scintillating blog post I slap up on Facebook. Right? RIGHT??!?)

To add people to your “see first” menu,

go to the upper right corner of your main Facebook page–the spot where it lists your name, and has icons for chat, privacy settings, etc. At the right of that menubar is another little down arrow. Click it. Look through the pop up menu that appears, and select “News Feed Preferences.” Click on the “People” category to the left of the pop up window that appears. This is where you can re-follow friends (in case you accidentally just unfollowed me a minute or two ago), and it’s also where you can tell Facebook that you always want to see their posts first.

(Interestingly enough, it also shows you how many posts you’ve seen by different friends over the last week. See anyone (other than me) on there that you really didn’t want to see that much of? Maybe think about unfollowing them . . .)

Scroll through the list and pick the people who you want to see the most. Hover your mouse over the “Following” menu to the right of their name, and some other options will appear. Click on “See First,” and you’re good to go! (Note: this also works for pages. So if you’re like me and want all the Alton Brown posts he can write, you can add him to your “See First” list. Just don’t tell Aunt Edna that you unfollowed her and her 8 children, but you’re avidly hanging on every word that comes from the mouth of the world’s most awesome TV food expert.)

Anyway. I’ve now done my good deed for the week. Feel free to pass this information on to all your friends and relations. Why? Because what we don’t need to see any more of is this:

And that pretty much only happens when people don’t curate their Facebook feeds. It doesn’t have to be like that, peoples!

Got questions? Ask away!

If Only All Problems Could be as Simple as Mowing the Lawn

I don’t like mowing the lawn. There are too many variables involved, and it never stops until the summer is over. Snow blowing? Bring it on. It only happens now and then, and so I have an easier time doing it when I need to. But the lawn . . . it keeps growing, whether you want it to or not. And sometimes when you want to mow it, it rains, or it’s oppressively hot. And there are bugs.

But even with all those annoyances, there are some good things to be said about mowing the lawn. It’s a problem that’s easy to identify and easy to fix. Go outside, use the lawnmower for an hour and a half or so, and you’ll be done. Better yet, it’s a problem that’s easy for other people to help with. I’m not the only one in the family who can mow the lawn. Denisa and TRC pitch in, and the job becomes that much easier. Worst case scenario, a friend or neighbor can come over and get the lawn mowed.

What I mean is that, no matter how bad that lawn mowing gets, or how big of a nuisance it is, in the end, it’s just that: a nuisance. It’s a problem with a built-in solution.

If only all problems could be like that. What if your child is dealing with a bully at school? (Note: these are sample problems, particularly chosen because they’re not problems I’m dealing with at the moment. I’m not looking for specific help. I’m just trying to explore a concept.) Where’s the easy solution? Step in, and you might cause even more trouble for him. Doing nothing only lets the problem fester. Approach the kid? The kid’s parents?

There’s a lawn there, but there’s no way to tell how to mow it.

It’s even harder when you’re seeing someone else have a problem that you don’t know how to help. I’ve had friends face enormous medical bills, or deaths in the family, or prolonged illness. How do you help with that? What can you do? I know the standard answers: be there for them, support them, show them you care. But at the end of the day, all I want to do is make those problems go away. I want them fixed. I want that lawn mowed.

Of course, even lawn mowing isn’t always straight forward. Don’t mow it long enough, and what could have been an easy fix becomes a big ordeal. I remember one year here in Maine when we missed mowing for a few weeks, and then it took forever, and we still had to rake the clippings off all the lawn. That wasn’t fun.

And here I am at the end of the blog post. Nothing really figured out. No bright conclusions reached. The best I can come up with is to treat other people’s problems the same way I would like them to treat mine. Offer support. Commiserate. Be a listening ear when one is needed. We’ve all got more than enough problems, after all. The least we can do is help out however we can. Even if it doesn’t fix anything.

Anyone else got anything bright to add? I’m all for advice . . .

Ant-Man Review

Headed out to the theater with TRC and friends last night to check out Ant-Man. It’s a Marvel movie, so I definitely wanted to check it out in the theater, and I wasn’t let down. An easy 9/10 for me. Not quite the best Marvel movie, but definitely worth your money.

I think the thing I liked most about it was how “on theme” it was. It’s a movie about a guy who can grow and shrink at will and command ants to do his bidding, so . . . it sounds like it could be pretty lame. A far cry from the over-the-top powers of other superheroes. But it’s those exact limitations that make it succeed where some other superhero movies have failed.

I’m reminded of Man of Steel, where I just ended up getting bored in the middle. (It was a fine movie, but the action sequences in particular dragged on after a while.) When all Superman does is go around punching things and punching them some more, it gets old. When his powers are so enormous as to make any real tension contrived at best, it’s not the greatest.

With Ant-Man, the writers had to come up with ways for the hero to use those limited powers to get things done that he shouldn’t be able to do at first glance. In that respect, it felt much more like a Brandon Sanderson magic system than a typical superhero movie. They devote a good chunk of time to defining exactly what Ant-Man can and can’t do, as opposed to Iron Man or Captain America or Thor, where the powers are much more loosey goosey. (They’re strong. They’ve got technology. But what exactly are the limits? Who knows?)

That’s not the case here, and I loved it for that. It also helped that those powers played such a big part in the plot. Ants everywhere! Shrinking things! Things getting bigger! It was a blast from beginning to end.

Not a perfect movie, but a great time for sure. I’d love to see more like it. It was even better that it was remarkably clean–just a few light swears now and then. TRC appreciated that there was hardly any real romance, as well.

Check this one out, even if most Marvel movies leave you wanting more. I think this is one of the better ones.

To the Single-Brain-Celled Organism Riding that Harley Last Night

I get it. I understand how low your self-esteem is, and how the only thing keeping you from crying every time you look at yourself in the mirror is the fact that you shelled out money on a Harley Davidson loud enough to rattle windows in a tri-county radius every time you accelerate. Typically, I try to be an understanding and compassionate person, ready to see things from someone else’s point of view. The kind of guy who gives everybody the benefit of the doubt.

But wake up my sleeping two year old with your decibel blasting idiocy, and so help me, I throw all that understanding garbage right out the window. So just for today, I’m going to tell you what I really think about you. And I’ll use moving pictures, so that you have a chance of understanding.

When you go out on your motorcycle and rev it really loud at 8:30pm, you think you come off like this:

Peter Fonda. Dennis Hopper. The open road. Epitome of cool. But you, sir, are no Peter Fonda. You’re not even a sidekick Hopper. This is what you actually look like:

That’s right. You’re Jim Carrey.

Action Movies Ain’t What They Used to Be: They’re Better

I’ve been hearing about how great John Woo’s The Killer is for a long time. It appears on a lot of “best of action” lists, and so when I saw it was on Netflix, how could I pass it up?

It turns out, the question should have been, “Would I actually be able to finish it?”

I was, but mainly because I just hung in there and refused to give up, spreading the movie over several lunch breaks. I’d watch until I got bored, then I’d set it aside and come back to it the next day. I got bored a lot.

The plot is fairly straightforward: an assassin wants to get paid and save the vision of a girl he accidentally blinded during a hit gone bad. Some cops are after him, as well as the guy who owes him money and doesn’t want to pay up. Action ensues.

But it’s the action where things really fall apart for me. The film makes some stabs at characterization, but they go mostly nowhere, so it’s the action that has to hold the story together and keep the audience interested. Perhaps this movie worked better when it was released almost 30 years ago, but these days? I just don’t see it. There’s no real suspense. No question of whether or not the hero will die before the ending. Guns are always loaded with plenty of bullets, except for a scene or two where they conveniently aren’t. The good guys never miss (how could they, with the amount of lead they’re shooting?) and the bad guys always do.

Except when they don’t, and then it’s always conveniently in a spot that apparently the hero didn’t really need to function anyway.

Of course, since this is John Woo, we have random birds in all of the action scenes. Because birds.

The movie just doesn’t work. Even the editing of the action scenes leaves much to be desired. They shoot and continue to shoot until they stop shooting, which is the only way to tell if all the bad guys are dead or not. Really, each shootout could continue for an arbitrary amount of time. Just keep on having bloody explosions until you get tired and feel like taking a break.

Maybe it’s not the movie’s fault. Maybe it’s another example of me changing. But I still love action movies. (At least, I thought I did.) It’s just that I ask a bit more of them these days. I want to know what the hero is facing. When he gets out of scrape, I want to believe it was possible. It has to make sense logistically.

The Killer just . . . doesn’t. 6/10. The big discussion board posts on IMDB wondering how in the world this movie isn’t in the top 250 are really off base. It’s not a great movie, and I’m not going to say it is just because it’s got a cult following. Maybe it should be appreciated for the influence it had on later movies in the genre. I can see that argument being made. But if you’re looking for a rollicking good action flick, look elsewhere.

Has There Been a 10/10 Dreamworks Animated Movie?

The family watched Penguins of Madagascar last night. (It just got added to Netflix!). We all had a great time with the film. Plenty of laughs and penguin hijinx, just as you would expect. But after the movie was over and I went to rate it (8/10), TRC wondered why I wasn’t giving it the full 5 stars on Netflix.

“What was wrong with it?” he asked.

It’s a good question. I avoided it last night by just giving it 5 stars, but even after thinking about it, I still don’t feel like it’s a 10/10 movie. I laughed (lots), and it was a bunch of fun, but . . . it’s a Dreamworks movie, and frankly, they all pretty much blend together.

Think about it. They’ve got a pattern down at this point. Can you really remember the difference between the Shrek movies? Madagascar? Kung Fu Panda? Then there’s a slew of stand alones. The Croods. Megamind. I’ve enjoyed all of them, but they all start to feel more or less the same. You’ll get some snappy, irreverent humor. Characters will come to some heartfelt discovery about themselves, band together, and defy the odds.

Rinse and repeat. (I don’t count the Aardman animated movies. Those are really Dreamworks.)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 departed from that a bit, but still nowhere in the 10 classification. What do I think of when I think of 10/10 animated movies? Well, there’s obviously Pixar. Yes, their movies have also begun to follow a pattern (and it’s not too different from the one I just described), but they do it so well. I remember Up and Wall-E and Toy Story years later. I remember the support characters, the jokes. Compare Toy Story 1-3 with Shrek 1-3, and I think you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Then again, I pride myself in accepting a movie on its own terms. Of rating it according to what it was shooting for. So what could Penguins have done differently? Nothing, really. It was what it wanted to be. So why doesn’t that deserve a 10? What was wrong with it?

In the end, nothing really. But it’s still an 8. A movie that aspires to be a forgettable, fun time does not a 10 deserve.

Maybe I’m a movie snob. What do you think?

Focus on the Positive

There’s a pinhead size blindspot in the middle of my right eye. It’s still the first thing I notice every morning when I wake up. You’d think that having lived with it for more than two years now, I’d be pretty much over it, but each morning when I wake up, there it is. It’s like I forget it’s there over the course of each day, and so when I see (or rather, don’t see it) each morning, it’s new all over again.

It doesn’t upset me as much now as it did then. While I see it new each time, it’s something that has become routine. Why do I bring it up today? Because today when I noticed it, it made me think about how in a way, that experience can represent a lot of the difficulties we encounter in life.

This blindspot isn’t big, but it’s central to my vision. It would be easy to focus on that. To really get bugged by that small piece of my eye that’s stopped working instead of appreciating all the vision that is still open to me.

It doesn’t usually take much for a day to go from normal to bad or normal to great. A few experiences one way or the other, and we’re left with an overall feeling of elation or disappointment. DC is always describing days as “The best day ever!”, and it’s easy to see why. She’s great at focusing on the positive things that happen and forgetting the negative. It’s something I need to work on, some days more than others. I can have something go wrong with my day, and it makes the entire rest of the day droop because of it.

I’m convinced that it doesn’t need to be this way. That if I practice more on seeing the good, the negative will get left behind. The trick is in actually doing it.

Any of you out there have any tips or tricks?

And for those of you wondering about the connection of this post and the picture at the top:

Pick Your Own YA Fantasy: A Reassessment

Okay, folks. Let’s get real here for a moment. Today should be part 15 of this ongoing web story. It’s been a strange experiment, and I’ve enjoyed parts of it and disliked other parts of it. Writing a story 1,000 words at a time with input from the readers has been less than ideal. I loved the input, but the haphazard pacing hasn’t been very fun.

And then there’s that bit about “input from the readers.” Part 14 has been viewed once. One time. That might even have been me looking at it. Hard to tell. But suffice it to say that the audience has sort of jumped off a cliff, in terms of numbers.

I don’t generally give up on projects. And I certainly would be willing to continue to give this the old college try, but in this case, it looks to me like it’s time to admit the experiment was fun while it lasted, but it has stayed past its welcome.

I could end the project easily enough: “John and Liese took a few steps into the library, put down the Tome of Ra, brushed their hands, nodded to each other, and Khalid teleported them back to their respective homes in a twinkling of an eye. John got his bear claw slippers back on and went straight to bed, exhausted.”

And that would be that. Perhaps that will be that. If anyone’s particularly fond of the idea of continuing this, let me know. Otherwise, I think I’ll shift my Wednesday posting schedule back to its original “whatever I feel like talking about” routine.

Thanks for playing, peoples.

Bill Cosby, Atticus Finch, and Fact vs. Fiction

So the “sequel” to To Kill a Mockingbird is out on the streets now, and people are starting to talk about it. I haven’t read it yet (and honestly don’t plan to, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute), but I have been able to pick up on a complaint that’s circulating about the book. (Mild spoiler ahead, though I assume it’s pretty common knowledge, and I have no idea how much it honestly has to do with the plot.)

Atticus Finch, Scout’s father, makes some pretty strong racist statements in the book.

That’s right. Atticus “Gregory Peck” Finch, the man who stood for all that was right and just in the world, “turns out to be” a racist. And people are now all aflutter with what that means for the original novel. Is it okay to still look up to Finch? Does this change everything? I read these articles and hear these discussions, and I just shake my head.

The best analogy I can think of at the moment is Bill Cosby and the piling rape accusations against him. Couple that with the statement a week ago that came out about how he admitted to buying drugs to give to women, and it doesn’t look good for Mr. Pudding Pop. That is an example where we must reevaluate our judgement of a character. Where the previous works of that person come under additional scrutiny. Does it wreck the Cosby Show or Fat Albert? I’m not sure, but it’s certainly an appropriate matter for some discussion. A man who continually portrayed himself as a pillar of the community who might be a serial rapist? What an awful story.

But all this talk about Atticus Finch being a racist? I find it more than a little silly, mainly because it ignores some basic facts about how books get made.

Granted, this assumes that Harper Lee’s creative process is similar to the other creative processes I’ve encountered as an author, but I’d be stunned if it weren’t the case.

Characters don’t spring up out of nowhere, fully formed and completely revealed to the author. When I’m writing, finding out who my characters really are is a big part of the process. Some authors do this ahead of time, before they write the novel. Some do it as they go along. But no matter how you do it, characters can still change. They evolve over time. From what I’ve read in this case, Lee started one book (Go Set a Watchman) and then went off in a new direction at the request of her editor. That new direction ended up with To Kill a Mockingbird. Now we’re being presented with a “sequel” that in reality was written first and appeared earlier in the creative process.

So which Atticus Finch should we believe? The one that initially appeared in a draft, or the one that appeared in the book we love?

Does it really matter? Let’s face it. Atticus Finch isn’t real. Not outside his book, he’s not. Treating this “new” Atticus like some big sort of key that unlocks who the “real” Atticus is just seems silly to me.

What if someone were to come out with a book written by JD Salinger that shows that Holden Caufield ended up being an ad executive in New York–that he turned into Don Draper from Madmen? Would that “ruin” the Catcher in the Rye? Why?

For me, fiction is there to give me new insights into people and ideas. There’s no “right” or “wrong” way to read a book. But a book should be read on its own terms. Mockingbird is a complete whole. This wasn’t a planned trilogy or anything.

In the end, I suppose this conversation will happen no matter what. I certainly think there’s merit in looking at the creative process and studying how it changes and evolves and affects art in general.

But saying that the new book “ruins” the old book doesn’t hold any water for me. If Christopher Robin ended up being a junkie in a slum somewhere, does that invalidate Winnie the Pooh? Why would it? It might make you feel bad, but it doesn’t change the work itself.

Bill Cosby? That’s different in the same way that I can’t watch a scene with the Twin Towers in them and not be forced to remember 9/11. It’s history. I can’t watch Cosby without thinking about these allegations against him now.

But can I read Mockingbird and ignore Watchman? You betcha.

Apples and oranges, people.