Wasting my life one day at a time...

Even though I’m not the type of person who enjoys making fun of things, I found something last night which begs to be mocked. But first, let me recount the details of how I stumbled upon this delicious discovery.

Let’s start with me explaining a few things about living at home when you’re 25.

First, you save a ton of money, thereby ensuring financial independence in perpetuity throughout your lifetime. But women won’t touch you because they see you as lazy, unmotivated, and a little creepy, since it’s not normal to enjoy living in your childhood bedroom when you’re old enough to be fathering your own kids.

Second, your parents secretly wonder if your aversion to independence is their fault and try to ween you from their nurturing teat without making you appear unwelcome in their home, feeling guilty at the same time for raising such a tight-wad.

Third, living at home, there are certain rules I’m expected to obey, in exchange for a free room, free food, free housekeeping, and free cable TV:

Rule #1 - I’m expected to go to church every week. No problem. A three hour nap every Sunday never hurts.

Rule #2 - I have a midnight curfew with no exceptions, unless previously okayed after much debate with my parents.

Rule #3 - No Internet surfing or computer use after 11:00 pm.

This rule was created to prevent the innocent children of the home (my 24-year-old younger brother and I) from looking at pornography and other “adult” material online while everyone else is in bed. The fact that I’m actually an adult and have been for seven years doesn’t matter. Naked people are inherently evil, and the rule is there to keep me from getting hooked on it, thereby keeping me from becoming a peeping-tom, thereby keeping me from becoming a serial rapist, thereby keeping me from becoming a serial killer, thereby keeping me out of prison, thereby saving me from a pain-free death by lethal injection or the more humane method of firing squad (only in Utah). So really, with the no Internet/no porn rule, my parents are saving my life, because it’s been scientifically proven that every man who looks at porn inevitably becomes a serial rapist/killer just like Ted Bundy, who claimed that he got his start looking at porn (a fact that all anti-porn crusaders love to mention).

The LDS church teaches that porn dulls the spirit, mocks reality, and creates unnatural desires, which is probably the reason why it’s so prolific in our culture and why it’s such a temptation for anything with a penis. What man doesn’t want to escape his loser life for a few minutes, bathed in the pinkish glow of cyberporn? The LDS church also teaches that porn, and its nasty cousin, masturbation, eventually lead to homosexuality. Honestly, I’m not making this up, and I’ll be happy to provide a reference to official church propaganda for any doubters. By the church’s logic, getting turned on by naked women somehow causes me to desire naked men. If that fact were true, ninety percent of the men on Earth would be gay by now. Sounds like logical thinking to me.

Anyway, back to my story. I violated rule three last night and was on the family computer well after midnight trying to download a piece of software to install on my laptop. Sadly, I wasn’t viewing pornography (thus ensuring my heterosexuality) but I did find a poem hidden among my younger brother’s college work that I thought was worth sharing. The poem was written for a recent ex-girlfriend of his. I’m going to post it here to let you readers form your own opinions of it (and him). Here it is, with all original formatting in place:

THE PERFECT PLACE

To Melissa:

Upon a stormy mountain, in the face of clouds so dark. Many different wild things lurking around like a spark. I walk a lone thinking quietly to myself. Which direction should I go which would make most sense to me. Then I feel a hand slowly work its way into mine. I look to my left and then I look to my right and I see an angel beautiful and devine. We walk around for hours, drenched from the rain above, but in ours hearts, the feeling is mutual that we are both in love.

Her hair is like velvet, soft and always sweet. Her hand as soft as a feather and her soul is very meek. A man like me doesn’t deserve the companionship that she brings, she makes me smile she makes me laugh and there is nothing in between. I am always happy to be with her each day, and no matter how I am feeling she always makes me a better man in every possible way. She is perfect in my eyes, and yet she doesn’t even know that no matter what happens in my life, my love for her will always grow. In every situation and in every single place, if she is there by my side, it will always be the perfect place.

Sweet, isn’t it? It instantly causes a few questions to surface in my mind. For instance, how are “different wild things lurking around like a spark?” I guess they’re not, since sparks are inanimate objects incapable of lurking, but he must have needed a word to rhyme with “dark,” and spark was the best he could come up with. Mixed metaphors aside, what’s really funny about the poem is how he claims they were in love, yet their brief relationship is history now. If it was true love, don’t you think the relationship would have lasted more than three weeks? I might be wrong, but it’s something to consider.

Resisting every critical urge in hate-filled heart, that’s all I’m going to say about it. I could probably go on for pages, putting my English degree to work and shredding the poem, but I’m not going to. For one, I like a challenge, and second, I actually admire him for having the balls to write something like this and give it to a girl, melodramatic though it might be. There might be something to be learned here about humilty, but I admit to learning nothing! The hit 90’s sitcom Seinfeld succeeded for nine years thanks to the motto “No hugs, no lessons,” because everyone knows hugs and lessons are gay and gayness leads to bad ratings. So trust me. I haven’t hugged my brother since he came home from his mission two years ago and I didn’t learn a thing from this.

# posted by RBW @ 1:17 PM