Thoughts on First Presidency response to election results

It's here:

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/statement-on-election-result

Anyway, I don't really have a problem with this. The Church generally has bishops read a letter to their congregations a couple times a year about how they (the General Authority) are completely neutral when it comes to political candidates (but not California propositions), but members should vote and be informed and stuff.

The Church is very diplomatic. And with a Mormon presidencial candidate, it was probably good that they said something. (The Church - as a whole, not the individual members - LOVES the fact that Romney ran, even though he didn't win, because it means more people across the world are learning what Mormons even are.)

It's just this line right here:

"We invite Americans everywhere, whatever their political persuasion, to pray for the President, for his administration and the new Congress as they lead us through difficult and turbulent times."

I can just picture Mormons everywhere being convinced this is some sort of prophecy of things to come, like in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" where the Sorting Hat warns all the students that they need to band together.

But really, the General Authority has been going on and on for years about how awful things are in our modern day.

Really, I just think it's a bunch of old guys who are still shocked to death that porn is now available on the internet.

And there ends my very blasphemous thoughts.

Tardar Sauce the Grumpy Cat

My new favorite thing is Tard (short for Tardar Sauce) the Grumpy Cat. Like all cats, she is an internet sensation. But she's different, because he was born with a face that always looks grumpy. And for some reason, that makes her a million times more adorable and hilarious.

See? Grumpy and adorable forever!

Seeing Grumpy Cat makes everything better and more happy for me.

OH MY GOD, COULDN'T YOU JUST DIE?!?!?!

I have a terrible weakness for cats. My sister and I laughed forever at his meow. 

On a more serious note, I've seen people complain that her name being "Tard" as in "retard" when she was obviously born with some deformities. Don't be ignorant, people. Her name is Tardar Sauce, which is just as adorable as she is.

For more, visit her website: http://www.grumpycats.com/about-grumpy-cat/

They're going to sell 2013 calendars of Grumpy Cat!!! I will be purchasing one of those!

Post-election things I hate

Now, I'm not going to lie - I'm super happy that Obama won the election and that Romney lost. I have lots of reasons for it, but I'm not going to tell you that now. Maybe later.

I understand that a lot of people are upset with the outcome of the election. For me, living in Utah and kind of being a Mormon, a lot of those people are extremely LDS. Some of them are saying things like,  "There's still lots to be grateful for," and "Let's just all pray for our president to be inspired to make the right choices," and I see those as very gracious, albeit sickeningly religious, responses. I don't know if I could be as gracious if things had gone the other way around.

But people posting this is something I hate:

Don't get me wrong - I love Gordon B. Hinckley (and for those of you who aren't LDS, I'll explain later why we feel a grandfatherly sort of love towards our presidents) and think he's very wise. 

But I really hate this idea that a lot of Mormons have that the President of the United States is basically a political prophet. I firmly believe in the idea of separation of church and state, and although it is okay for people to vote based off of their religious beliefs, why do they expect the entire country to be swayed by religion?

I don't know if this is what President Hinckley meant above, but I also really hate that a lot of Mormons tend to see the Founding Fathers as also sort of religious prophets. Mormon doctrine teaches that pilgrims settling America, the American Revolution, and the Constitution were all divinely inspired by God so that there could be a land of religious freedom so that all of the Joseph Smith story could happen. Which isn't a bad belief in my mind. To me, that just means that God influenced some events so that others that He really wanted to happen could occur.

To other LDS members, what that means is that the Constitution is unyielding scripture that cannot be touched and that the Founding Fathers are infallible.

Which is ridiculous and the cause of a lot of problems in our country.  

There was also this comment made on a picture of Obama that the Salt Lake Tribune (love them) had posted: 

I can't take someone seriously if they don't even know how to use punctuation marks correctly.

Now I also believe in the Book of Mormon (from which this scripture comes). But I do not believe that this scripture has anything to do with Obama winning the election.

And I really don't believe in the Old Testament superstitions that, if we do not all repent as a country, we will all be punished. Maybe that did or did not happen in Old Testament times. But I certainly do not believe that God will punish us as a country because we aren't repenting (and definitely not because we voted for the "wrong" person). 

The really frustrating thing about all of this, besides the crazies revealing themselves and the abundance of religion on my Facebook (where I sincerely believe it does not belong), is that you just know, based on all of this, that there are people out there who voted for Romney because of his religion and because they believed that him being LDS would make him more divinely inspired while running the country.

I guess the bottom line for me is, people really need to separate political stuff from religious stuff. Maybe not completely, but definitely with their gloom and doom prophecies. 

Artist Highlight

So Colby and I recently went to a museum that was displaying a small amount of work by Takashi Murakami, an awesome modern artist from Japan. 

I don't know anything about art, by the way, so if calling him "modern" is wrong, I apologize. I just mean that he's still alive. 

A lot of his stuff is really weird and surreal, and it's heavily inspired by Japanese anime styles. You can tell just from looking at it. 

Anyway, we really liked this piece:

Pretty cool, huh?

Colby decided that the reason why he liked it is because it was the only piece in there that acknowledged the oddity of the world Murakami had created. He's a pretty wise man, that Colby. (I think I probably agree with him, though. While I appreciated a lot of what the artist was "saying" about commercialism, consumerism, and marketing, a lot of it was probably just too much for my aesthetic taste.)

I also apologize because I don't know the names of any of these pieces and Google isn't being very helpful ...

While we're talking about Murakami, I'm going to show you this picture I found online of an exhibit he did in Versailles, France: 

This is one of the characters he's created, "Kiki"

How weird is that? The clash of cultures is SO AWESOME, and so surreal. Just bizarre. Loving it. Just kind of geeking out right now.

Things that bother me on Pinterest

Hello, Readers!

For today's edition of Things Angry Ally is Angry About, we are going to talk about one of the things that bother me on Pinterest. This particular "cute" post was pinned by someone I follow:

Now, the issue I have with this, besides the fact that I hate these "misunderstood quirky girl" posts, is that it promotes rape culture.

(I hate to go all serious on you and use the "R" word, but really, I don't. If you knew me, you'd know that I like to angrily use the phrase "rape culture" a lot.)

What is Rape Culture? I'll save you the trip to Wikipedia:

Rape culture is a concept used to describe a culture in which rape and sexual violence are common and in which prevalentattitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone sexual violence.
Examples of behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, and trivializing rape. 

Now you know.

So a post like this one, which says "She'll scream and fight you, but secretly, she'll love it," promotes the Scarlett O'Hara rape myth that victims like to be raped.

Scarlett O'Hara and her husband in Gone With the Wind.

This is not true. Victims NEVER like to be raped. 

And, as a Feminist and a frequent victim of tickling, I also hate "Tickle her, even when she says stop." Okay, well, that's just horrible. All the years of health teachers and PSAs trying to teach men that "no means no" just completely undone by this post.

Now, you're all going to ask me what tickling and throwing girls into pools has to do with rape. You probably see it as one of these: 

But teaching young boys that it is okay to physically overpower girls in a playful situation can easily escalate (ha) into other situations. It is never okay to teach boys to ignore girls when they scream or say "no."

Social Media Language

I am a frequenter (read: addict) of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. I mean, what else am I supposed to do in class when the grad student who is our teacher drones on and on about the folds (the folds!) in the clothing in the particular painting we are looking at?

(Self Portrait by Artemisia Genteleschi. See? Folds. Which can be kind of cool. But not when you talk about it over and over and over.)

Back to the social media platforms. See, something about them have been bothering me of late.

It's the wording that people use.

On Facebook, I see status updates like this: "Hubby just bought me a new stand mixer! So excited!" or "Hubby finally let me buy a dishwasher! Yay!"

First of all, I have many problems with the word "hubby," but that is a matter of opinion and you shouldn't listen to me if you like it. The real problem I have with a post like that is how sexist it is. Readers might not think its sexist because it was posted by a female, but it still is.

What I'd rather see is something like this: "Hubby and I finally bought a stand mixer! This will make cooking so much easier for the both of us!" or "Hubby and I made a huge, grown-up financial decision and bought a dishwasher!"

Your husband may have been the individual who made the purchase, but (if you share your finances in a traditional way), he did not buy you that stand mixer. If you have all of your finances combined and share a bank account, then you both bought that stand mixer. He also never "lets" you buy anything, because this is not the 1950s, and you do not have an allowance that he gives you. The two of you may have decided on a budget together that you choose to adhere to, but you are also an adult who is allowed to make whatever decisions you want regarding money.

Readers, I'm really sorry for using the word "hubby" so much.

The moral of the story is that I really just feel bad for these young women. All of the ones I'm thinking of are under the age of 23. They're all really excited about their new marriages and starting a life and a home of their own, which is understandable (and, I think, a pretty awesome phase of life). The problem comes when these girls adopt retrograde family, marriage, and domesticity models, for which I blame their mothers, the false, idyllic images they have in their heads, and, often, a misuse of common religious values.

It probably means next to nothing at this phase of their lives. They're excited to try out new ideas that they get from Pinterest and to use all of the kitchen gifts they were given from their wedding registry. I doubt that most of their husbands are trying to push them into old-fashioned and demeaning roles (although, I could be wrong). But if wives start their relationships out a certain way, down the line, years from now when they finally decide that they are sick of being stuck in that role, it'll be so much harder to get out of. They're starting an unfortunate, downhill precedent.

So, yeah. Hope that's some food for thought.