The topic that bubbled up all over Outer Blogness this week was the “natural man”! For example, Bull asks about how to tell who’s really a man from who’s really a woman — just drop trou? Or is it not that simple? And what about the implications for “eternal gender”? In a similar vein, Tom tries to explain what it means to be gay when it’s “everything and nothing all at the same time.” M suggests we put away the supernatural man instead. Naturally, all of this falls on the heels of the Bruce Hafen talk discussed here (or see here for the believers’ discussion) and of the debut of Yes on 1 campaign.
By coincidence (?), there was quite a lot of discussion about restraint and self-deprivation this week! Talk Thursday was all about it, with an intriguing closet-gay-erotic anecdote by Sideon, as well as more thoughts on self-deprivation by the rest of the Talk Thursday gang here, here, here, and here (my apologies if I’ve missed any — if so, please comment), and — in an even more interesting coincidence — Eugene is cranking up the supercharger on his hot, hot abstinence porn!
Then there was the discussion of the politico-economic side of the deferred gratification question! In Deferred Pleasure 101 Kerfuffler explains:
Even though as a capitalist society, our overall welfare depends on saving and investing, the people of communist China seem to be much better at this than we are. In spite of being read fables about grasshoppers and ants, consumption (of mass quantities!) is about the only thing that we do not put off for later. And we are much worse about this than we were a century ago.
In the pay-for-what-you-use fail department, a teabagging congressman breaks the irony meter (following closely on the heels of another interesting scene from our surreal new political world). Randy reviews a book about unrestrained greed and the exotic investment instruments at the heart of the panic of 2008. And — to provide moderation in all thing — the Urban Koda argues against deferring gratification all the way until the afterlife.
On a related note, this week’s secret ingredient is bacon. Yep, bacon. You can cook it into little egg, bacon, and cheese biscuit cups, or throw caution to the wind and toss some into chocolate-chip cookies!!! Delicious both for starving cafeteria Mormons and take-out Mormons alike! (And, while we’re talking about food, these miracle berries sound pretty interesting as well…)
After all this consumption, naturally you have a bunch of junk to get rid of. You can always throw a yard sale or just leave your junk out with the trash and see what happens.
Our runner-up subject for this week was faith and strange faiths. Like Jedi knights who want the same rights as other faiths. Or faith displays that look like they’re, um, compensating for something. Plus there were the usual faith vs. reason debates. And the LDS Stake Medium Council gives a straight-forward demonstration that the global (not local) flood is LDS doctrine — despite what some apologists would like to believe.
Lastly, we have some announcements from the land of Mormon Literature!!
Zoe Murdock is going on tour to read and discuss Torn by God (which I reviewed here). Be sure to go see her at the Book Cellar in St. George on Thursday, September 24th at 6 pm and at the King’s English Bookshop on Saturday, September 26th at 2 pm!!
Mr. FOB has reviewed No Going Back. I’m planning to discuss the book myself here at Main Street Plaza next week — see here for info on possibly getting a review copy if you want to join in the discussion.
And — starting this Tuesday! — we’ll be serializing Bordeaux Mission here at Main Street Plaza!! This is the last complete novella from the novel Exmormon that we’ve been serializing here for the last few years. Now, we’ve finally arrived at the missionary story! Look here for the notes on what to expect from this segment. If you haven’t read the earlier sections (Young Women’s, Youth Conference, Saturday’s Warrior, BYU, Gratuitous Love Scene, Polygamist, Temple Wedding, and Orem High) don’t worry — you don’t need them as background to read this story. I hope you’ll enjoy it! š