Jacob Bender's Blog, page 8

Fellowshipping vs Friendship

I did some hometeaching earlier this week among a couple of "less-active" folks on my roster.  I put "less-active" in scare quotes there, because it turns out they have been intermittently sitting in on some sacrament meetings elsewhere in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area.  One guy on my list prefers the quiet anonymity of personal worship that comes from arriving a couple minutes early to a large ward where no one knows you, to then bounce a couple minutes early before anyone tries...

"Back in Time..."

Dude, this old guy in a DeLorean just cut me off while I was flying over Hill Valley in a rain storm on my way to see Jaws 19.  Here, I got a pic of him, can anyone read the license plate??
Spilled my PepsiPerfect all over my new smart-coat and sports almanac and everything.  I mean, yes, the former is self-cleaning, but the latter was supposed to celebrate my Cubs' World Series win!  Get a hover board and show some courtesy, you maniac!

On Late-90s Classic Rock

Couple months ago, a friend and I were reminiscing about our teenage years in the late-90s--specifically, how much they sucked.  Yeah, yeah, the American economy was decent(er) and the horrors of 9/11, Iraq, the PATRIOT ACT, and mass shootings galore were still beyond the horizon, and the worst example of Executive abuse we knew of was the President having an affair in the Oval Office; but that was just it, things were too good, we were all too complacent, too cartoonishly cocky and jaun...

A Spring Break Miracle!

 Sometimes miracles do happen.

It was near midnight, the end of Spring Break.  We had made it out of Puerto Rico, and as far as Chicago, but no further.  There were no other flights going out to Cedar Rapids that night, and the flights next morning were all over-sold.  We hemmed and hawed what to do; do we check onto a bus?  Try and fly red-eye standbys through other airports into Iowa?  But none of those left till the morrow either.  Sleep at the airport aga...

THIS IS HALLOWEEN!!!

The Comps Reading Project part 17: THE END!!!

TO QUOTH THE LIZARD KING: THIS IS THE END, MY ONLY FRIEND, THE END!!!  SO ENDS MY SPECIAL TOPIC LIST!!! SUCK ON THAT, ANGLO-MODERNISM!!!

I must now take a break to spend the next-odd month feverishly writing and compiling my comps portfolio, in time to submit it to my committee by Nov. 4th (it will be a most frightening Halloween season indeed!).  I will then spend the ensuing 2 weeks cramming the last half-dozen critical works on my historical list, in prep for my Comps Defense--a f...

The Eyes of Richard G. Scott

The paradox of photography is that the medium conceals as much as it reveals. Take for example the above press-shot of the Apostle Richard G. Scott.  It is of course, like all publicity photos, carefully airbrushed and digitally tweaked to artificially create the impression that there is a light emanating from his countenance, that there is some subtle halo about his head.  But the irony isn't that he doesn't look Photoshopped in real life, no--the irony is that the photo utterly fa...

The Comps Reading Project part 16

THIS IS THE WEEK I FINALLY FINISHED THE LAST OF THE PLAYS AND POEMS ON MY HISTORICAL LIST, AND OVER TWO-THIRDS OF MY SPECIAL TOPIC LIST, GUYS I AM SO FRICKIN CLOSE I CAN SMELL IT


Modernism is the Literature of Celebrity, Jonathan Goldman. 2011 study picking up where Jaffe and Glass left off.  Traces how style became conflated with celebrity as early as the Modernist period, following the examples of Oscar Wilde (for whom his writing became so identified with him that it was used as evidenc...

Ben Folds So There

(More in my continuing adventures of writing something that isn't Comps related for a change, before I go mad!  2 more months, 2 more months, 2 more months...)

So There is Ben Fold's best new album in over 10 years.

Some context: I play piano, and any kid who played piano in the late-90s/early-aughts remembers how absolutely everyone insisted that you must therefore like Ben Folds Five, too.  I didn't.  Part of it was being told that I seemed like a natural Ben Folds fan came of...

The Comps Reading Project part 15

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