Ardis recently bailed and started her own blog, and now Kaimi is posting at the other two "Big Blogs" while not posting at the SS Skidmark. Ardis has gone to emeritus status, but Kaimi has not.
The last time there was a big blowout at T&S it was over Adam flipping out. KHH and Melissa quit and Adam was suspended for a year.
Did the same thing happen again between Ardis and Kaimi? If so, is this a bit of brown-nosing to ingratiate himself? Or are Kaimi and Ardis just a couple of fabulously ungracious ex-hosts who have had their admin powers revoked so they can no longer delete obnoxious comments? Whatever happened, Kaimi does not want to talk about it in public.
Can T&S stay afloat as the Dave and Julie show? Or, will it join MSplat in the Stygian depths of the Bloggernacle netherworld of former bigness?
Ardis Parshall, super-duper hardcore MoHistory megabuff adds to the Bloggernacle's long list history of totally mis-appropriated blog names derived from Old Historical Mormon Periodicals:
All participants in the original Keepapitchinin were masked behind pseudonyms; I will take credit or blame for what appears here under my own name. Unlike the original, which made its points through satire, adolescent jokes, and cartoons, this incarnation of the Keepapitchinin will make its points with plain old narrative, chiefly in a historical vein.So, in other words, your blog will be nothing like its namesake. Awesome! Join the ranks of Times & Seasons, Mormon Wasp, Millennial Star, Messenger & Advocate, Juvenile Instructor, and The Exponent. Now, some might have foolishly thought a history buff would have been more true to the original source and inspiration, but, hey, with a strong Bloggernacle historical tradition like this to build on, you are only following suit. And landing yourself all the way up at the top on MoArch as an Isle of the Sea, leap-frogging all those other small-timers. Congratulations, Ardis. Your MorMen and T&S stepping stones have served you well and made you a big-timer in the Bloggernacle. Which will no doubt launch you into... um... well... err... bigger... uhnn... yeah.
Julie M. Smith is smarter than you, smarter than everyone in fact, especially those ignorant Mormons who keep making absurd movie recommendations to her on topics she clearly knows more about than anyone else, so much more she is entitled to review movies she has never seen and hold her nose in disdain at them. Why see a movie that is fundamentally flawed in its perceived conception? Especially when she is just too busy, so busy, so very busy (but not too busy to read all the comments, just too busy to respond to them substantively, but not too busy to insult the comment makers, but clearly too busy to watch this movie, but not too busy to post a review about the movie in question). Call it a hunch, but I bet Julie spent more time on this blog post than the running length of the movie.
The last time Elder Ballard endorsed blogging, the 'Nacle was all a-twitter that a member of the 12 had taken note of its existence.
That notion was largely disabused here.
However, the more I read Elder Ballard's remarks, the more I'm convinced he is aware of the Nacle. Yes, 'Nacle, Elder Ballard knows about you!
Think about it:
Elder Ballard, speaking to young, newly-minted BYU-I grads:
... Elder Ballard suggested that graduates join in conversations on the Internet to share the gospel and to explain the message of the Restoration in simple, clear terms.
Elder Ballard, speaking to mothers with young children:
... don’t allow yourself to be caught up in the time-wasting, mind-numbing things like television soap operas or surfing the Internet.
Prediction: Elder Ballard's October 2008 conference talk will be titled, "Lawyers Who Know."
Discuss.
Following up Zelph's statistical exercise in self-flagellation is the final installment of "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" or "Who Wasted the Most Time on the Bloggernacle?"
Which SAHM Neglected Their Children the Most?
1. Heather O., MMW: 190
2. fMhLisa, FMH: 106
3. The Wiz, MMW: 101
4. Deborah, ExII: 91
5. Julie M. Smith, T&S: 70
Who Placed Their Employment Status in the Greatest Jeopardy? *
1. Kaimi Wenger, T&S: 54,667
2. Kevin Barney, BCC: 54,447
3. Nate Oman, T&S, 36,480
4. Matt W., NCT: 34,450
5. J. Nelson-Seawright, BCC, 31,903
6. Steve Evans, BCC: 67
*John Dehlin's chart-topping category killers omitted since he can now blog professionally
It was only a matter of time. A mere 18 hours after General Conference had been adjourned came the FMH Conference Report. Eight hours of conference sessions and ECS can’t find a single positive thing to say about the addresses other than this morsel:I think Elder Ballard meant well…
President Monson’s address – his closing remarks where he spoke at length of his beloved wife and her lengthy stay in a hospital after recuperating from a tragic fall – left ECS “disheartened”. Kinda makes me wonder exactly what it would take to impress ECS.
If the Church were to take ECS’ counsel to action, both mothers and fathers of young children would be exempted from callings other than hymnbook collecting. This begs the question - who would be left to run the wards and branches? No doubt complaints about ageism would flood the ‘nacle.
You can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but the gals over at FMH? No how, no way.
In usual SnarkerNacle fashion, we like to decry everything that is wrong about the Bloggernacle, and in this spirit we announce the 2007 Giblets, the horrid hairy-tongued aftertaste of the Nacle. In case you weren't around two years ago, we originally did it back then too. We didn't do it last year because we did the Niblets, and that ended up being so bad it was in and of itself the Giblets and doing another one again would have been horribly redundant. But, alas, poor Joseph Addison our anachronistic brother in snark was burdened, freeing up time for us to do the Giblets with some extra gravy!
Here is the list of Giblets categories we came up with thus far, to give you an idea of where it should go:
Best Blog Post About Court Case Winnings Including Fawning Over Righteousness of Winnings In Attempt to Convince Self it Hasn't Been Complete Waste of Time
Best Bloggernacle Big Blogger to Sneak Over to the DAMU Side and Drop the F-bomb Because Nobody on the Bloggernacle is Paying Attention to Him
Best Threadjacker on Anything Even Remotely Tangentially Kind Of Sort Of But Not Really Gay
Best New Big Group Blog Created Out of Obedience to GA Commands to Give Gay Ex-Mos a Place in the Bloggernacle
Best New Aggregator Created to Shoehorn DAMU Blogs Into the Bloggernacle
Biggest Blog for Sex/Transgender/Gender/Breastfeeding/Gential Mutilation Posts Gone Totally Awry
Biggest Conservative Group Blog to Fade Away Most Unnoticeably
Best Crazed Personal Attack Over Something Totally Irrelevant, Like Snacks At Church or Plastic Toys in Nursery
Best Blog Post About Miserable Misunderstood Europeans Who Suffer Mightily at the Hands of Naive American General Authorities
Best Blog Post Exposing the Foibles of Church Presidents Making it Easier for us to Falsley Justify Our Sins
Best Blogger Who Goes Completely Bonkers When Commenting on Abortion
Now, feel free to submit whatever category you like and they will all get piled into the mess.
Then, unlike JA's elitist group of "whiney and wrong" self-promoting category nominators, you, yes you beloved gentle reader, will have the power, the unmitigated, raw, burgeoning power of nominating whoever the heck you please for any and all categories. Oh, sweet pleasure of vanity! You too can nominate yourself anonymously just like they did. Or, you can rise above narcissistic vanity and actually nominate someone else. Your choice. Why wait for DKL to tally up your Niblet votes when you can voice your opinion here and now? (Wait a minute, I seem to recall him complaining about the lack of transparency in the nomination and voting process in last year's Niblets, and yet he participated as one of the secret nominators and now he is running the votes off the blog site he administers. I guess when it comes to transparency, it is all relative.)
Fellow Nacclites!
It is with greatly inflated ego and unilateral pride that the Quorum of the Indeterminate Number of Snarks has declared the nominees and winners of the 2008 Unilateral Niblet Awards!
Simply put, after much correlative counseling regarding last year’s chaotic debacle which degenerated into a whine fest seldom seen outside the Nursery, Dazzle and I decided it would be so much easier just to declare the nominees and winners in one single post. We did so in order to save the environment by conserving bandwidth, keystrokes, and whining.
Go ye, therefore, rejoice with the winners and weep with the also-rans.
That is all.
Who knew Tween Popstar Phenom Hanna Montana was a Bloggerancle fan? Color me surprised! All this week she will be doing a Disney version of "We're a Big Dysfunctional Family of Self-Absorbed Freaks That Can All Get Along and Love Each Other in 30 Minutes (less time for a word from our sponsor)" as she mimics the Bloggernacle's online community interactions. With the writer's strike over, Miley's version will no doubt be as substantive and genuine as the Bloggernacle version.
While Joseph Addison is doing all he can to delete all negative comments from the post and keep all the squeaky wheels greased (hey, did you notice that all of the major whiners from last year's Niblets are on the list of his "mighty and strong" nominators?) to avoid repeating last year's train wreck, that will be nothing compared to the virtual power of a ten ton locomotive of pre-adolescent narcissism when it comes to ensuring success.
Thank you Hanna for lending your credibility to something that might otherwise look... well... staged and a little bit fake.
You know what I can’t stand? Young punks today. They think they’ve got it rough. They don’t know nothin’! I tell you what. Back in my day, we knew hardship.
Take missionaries for example. Look at ‘em! Ridin’ around on high-end bikes with helmets that could survive a 100 mph impact with a brick wall. Back in my day we didn’t need bicycle helmets. We rode 100 miles from one appointment to the other – no stops. If you fell behind you were left behind and your companion baptized your replacement up the road in the ditch and you had to hop freight trains to get home. That’s the way it was. That’s the way it was and we liked it. We loved it!
Another thing – all this instant communication technology. What’s with that? Back in my day, we didn’t have LDS.org. We didn’t even have the Ensign! Back in my day if you wanted to hear the words of the Prophet, you went to his house. That’s the way it was and we liked it! If you didn’t like it, you were excommunicated and that’s how we dealt with free thinkers.
Young kids today have too many damn channels on their TV! Back in my day we only had three channels and we could only see one clearly and it had the audio feed from another channel. So when we were watching Dallas we got stuck with the audio from Hill Street Blues. I knew who shot JR! Mick Belker shot that dirtbag!
The Wiz is right. You young punks live in a friggin’ utopia. When I think of all the havoc I could’ve wreaked with the stuff you take for granted today I get downright depressed that all these toys are wasted on the young.
Now get back to work so my Social Security check doesn’t bounce. Don’t make me break out my Cat of Nine Tails on your lazy butts!
The Millennial Black Hole has a pretty new WordPress interface, great. But the posts are the same old, same old. New posts? Something half-baked and dumbed-down from Clark, and some new guy who has earned himself perma status by being friends with Brian Duffin and doing the new chrome job, and a new perma who doesn't post, and one sentence posts by GeoffB that should just be sidebar links. Impressive work, people.
The only thing the new paint job really accomplishes is making T&S's ancient, ugly front end look even more staid and archaic by contrast. Seriously, how hard would it be for T&S to recruit Scott away from M* like BCC did to MM? Maybe T&S held off because Scott didn't have the foresight to provide a link to the front page anywhere on the sidebar, banner or front page.
MHole, I dub you MSplat, because your reincarnation falls down flat. Keep trying. Maybe you'll be big again someday.
Is it me, or have things been changing there at FMH over the past few months. FMH used to get criticized a lot for heavy-handed moderating (moderating that would even make BCC Steve Evans look like a gentle touch with kid gloves) and for being prurient. But, lately, they have been remarkably tolerant of dissent in the comments and now this! Contrast it with this!!! Wow, what a difference. When I saw Lisa's mk. 2 post my stomach churned, but wait, the comments are actually...well...not anything like the mk. 1. Could it be possible that FMH is growing up? They have made it past pre-adolescence and are becoming...dare I say it...somewhat mature? Perish the thought. With people acting all responsible and intelligent, it doesn't leave a snarker much to work with.
When she isn't yelling at him and throwing his research material away, BiV is blogging about how she has the hots for a "Centrum Stud." Wow, Dr. B., what kind of unpleasant inferences can be drawn from that? Eew. No wonder the guy spends so much time searching for mission quotes and posting them on his blog. Who can hold a candle to such a crusty old geezer as this Pulitzer Prize winning spinner of tawdry grandfatherly wisdom? Maybe Dr. B can pound some Ensure, and muster up the courage to write about dusty floors, silent guitars, dried up flowers and old women feeding corn to chickens. Hawt! Good luck with that, Dr. B.
FMH has been embroiled in a controversy over... sexism? ... racism? ... child abuse? ... wife beating? ... Poop? ... No, none of these. What then? Nursery. Um, yes, Nursery. You know, that two hour block of time the pre-Primary toddlers go into once a week on Sunday, so their parents can hopefully participate in other church-related activities. The battle over Waldorf-style Nurseries was caustic, with Artemis being variously attacked and defended for wanting things a particular way in Nursery. It got so bad she followed up with another blog post defending herself, going to great lengths to show how normal and pedestrian she is, not at all a Al Gore-hugging, elitist Europhile. This racks up a combined total of 300+ comments.
Gordon Bitner Hinckley commemorative post: ~30 comments.
Order of magnitude difference there.
FMH, where Primary Pinecones beat out Prophets Passing 10:1
G is sick and tired of men objectifying women's reproductive organs, so she is fantasizing about decapitating and dismembering men in retaliation. Fair is fair, right? I am going to hazard a guess and say the man in her drawing is the father of the sleeping baby girl, who is obviously drugged in her little papoose, as Mom is sweating from the exertion of killing her baby-daddy, which high-impact activity would certainly wake up any normal child.
That, or the Artist's Block has backed things up so bad it is affecting G's thinking such that she thinks Amazons reproduce asexually and breaking into a sweat while dismembering guys doesn't require the kind of physical activity that would wake up a child. Who knows? Creative constipation has clearly taken its toll. Time for some corrective action:
Try that, G, and you can post about it tomorrow as another installment in the FMH Poop Chronicles, which are always a welcomed sight for the classy chicks at FMH, who just cannot get enough of boobie throw pillows and wang and cooter cheese cakes. Then maybe you can stop obsessing about your reproductive organs and make some real art. Purge the poo and use that as fertilizer for your Asherah worship (‘get my grove on’).
Sure, ladies, it is sad and wrong that men objectify your doo dads, but how is what you are doing any different? It isn't. G's post is just as sad and wrong as what she decries. How will anyone ever take FMH seriously when posts like this impeach its credibility?
Yo newbie, whattap! Listen up, greenie, let me tell you how it is in the hood:
Get a blog name from some obscure Early LDS Church periodical, the more obscure the better. All of the obvious, well known ones are taken already, so you may have to do a little searching. Don't worry that your blog has nothing to do at all with the old namesake, none of the current ones do either.
Link all the other Mormon blogs and Nacle Index sights. If you want love, you gotta give it. Free love is bad in the real world, but in the Bloggernacle it rules.
Beat the dead horse. Whatever is getting a lot of play in the other blogs, you blog about that too. Then comment in those threads and link back to your blog.
State the Obvious. Say the same thing, just in a slightly different and new way, to keep it fresh. There is nothing new under the sun, but if you can put it in the context of current events and throw in some clever turn of phrase, you win.
Suck up to get ahead. Praise the brilliance of bloggers you want to ally with and parrot them and add in some of your own tidbits to support their position. Bloggers are narcissists, use that to promote your blog. Admit it, you are a narcissist too The more you suck up the more likely you will asked to be a guest blogger.
Neglect everything else. The more you neglect really important things in your life to blog, the more successful you will be. Really, there is no substantial difference between fame and infamy in the Bloggernacle, so abandon husband, wife, kids, work and self in your quest for Bighood.
Quality is irrelevant. Post anything, it doesn't matter. Really. As long as you can somehow relate it to something Mormon, go ahead. It has all been done already, so nobody will complain. No, really, I am not kidding. Good is nice and may get you some readers, but shocking pandering gets attention.
Don't mess with facist admins, they will ban you faster than you can say "September Seven." If you disagree with Steve Evans at BCC or say T&S sucks on T&S, expect to be banned. Whining about it afterwards is sour grapes, doing it will only make you look like you deserved it. Narcissists hate being criticized, don't do it. Yes, they are wrong, it doesn't matter, they don't want to hear it.
The Bloggernacle is not your ward. It is a bunch of weirdos who happen to be Mormons, and they have too much time on their hands and either cannot or do not want to go outside and play. They want to obsess about things that don't matter. Don't expect to be treated respectfully as a stranger or new visitor, this isn't going to church, it is more like Middle School all over again.
If you don't know what you are talking about, shut up or get whacked. An opinionated ignoramus in the Bloggernacle is like chum in shark-infested waters. Lay low until you earn some credibility and get a feel for the people, don't impeach your credibility by talking smack right off the bat. It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, there are smarter people around who are skilled at shredding people like you just for laughs. If you think Mormons are nice and polite, you are in the wrong place, because most places they are, but here is not most places.
Welcome, foddery n00bs!
The Harangue turned 3 years old this week (so it isn't New anymore, and how Cool it ever was is subject to debate). Happy berfday to them.
As their regular readers know, the focus of the posts there has always been trying to look beyond the mark when it comes to Mormon doctrine, theology, and scriptures. They have spent a lot of time trying to speculate wildly about the atonement of Jesus Christ, free will/agency, foreknowledge, personal revelation, eternal progression, and all sorts of other difficult theological and philosophical subjects they really know very little about. Along the way there has been a lot of contention and disagreement. Why? Because:
GeoffJ hates knuckleheaded comments.
In the middle of them speculating wildly on the atonement of Jesus Christ some numbskull (i.e., anyone who doesn't agree with GeoffJ) will come along and tell them to stop wasting their time. Not surprising, quite frankly, given some of the ridiculous things they discuss. Like Multiple Mortal Probations and wacky Atonement theory that ignores what the rest of Christendom figured out nearly 2000 years ago. No, I’m not kidding. These types of comments irritate GeoffJ to no end, because they don't dwell on how greatly enriched by these discussions he is and how he feels more knowledgeable about the things of God.
Since GeoffJ is irritated as he blogs uncharitably, I will guess about a potential reason for that kind of comment: A severe inability to live the restored gospel. Yup — worldly people are afraid that pulling back the curtain and looking hard in the mirror will reveal that they are living a sham or something (to put it in Wizard of Oz terms). Being willing to look closely at yourself takes faith that the restored gospel holds up when applied to your life and my guess is that some people are deathly afraid that looking closely at their own lives will reveal awful results.
Wah!
Speculating wildly is nonsense. Studying the scriptures closely in order to know how we should act and what we should do is a good thing. The restored gospel can easily tell someone how they live their life. The scriptures certainly are not against us studying the gospel so we will know how to act:
Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come. (D&C 130: 18-19)As this Scripture states, the knowledge and intelligence is gained through diligence and obedience, just as Jesus taught, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine" meaning if we do the Father's will then we will be filled with His doctrine. Nothing there about being ardently dedicated to speculating wildly in ignorance, just talking about living right and learning as a result of it.
The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. (D&C 93: 36)Yes, and taking it in context with D&C 93, when people exercise their agency to reject evil and do good, then they are filled with light and truth, which the adversary takes away because of disobedience. So, what do we need to do to be filled with light and truth? Speculate? No. Obedience? Yes.
It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance. (D&C 131: 6)Here, Joseph makes it plain that choosing to ignore the ordinances of God will damn you, as he states:
There are a great many wise men and women too in our midst who are too wise to be taught; therefore they must die in their ignorance, and in the resurrection they will find their mistake. Many seal up the door of heaven by saying, So far God may reveal and I will believe.So, the ignorance Smith is talking about is not that of esoteric bits of soteriological knowledge, but the willful ignoring of the call to repent and be baptized by an authorized servant of God. So, once again, the Scriptures do not support what GeoffJ is saying.
All men who become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ will have to receive the fullness of the ordinances of his kingdom; and those who will not receive all the ordinances will come short of the fullness of that glory, if they do not lose the whole (TPJS, Pg. 509)
But, look, people can live the Gospel all they want. We are all free to choose. But there at the Harangue they are all about trying to understand what they consider to be important, and not actually living the gospel. Those who don’t like that are free to step off. (Of course GeoffJ mean that in that in the nicest possible way, which is to say, "If you aren't a rampant speculator who likes looking beyond the mark and ignoring the obvious, then don't comment there, but please still do read the blog, because he watches the stats very closely, just don't comment, because he doesn't care what you think, unless you agree with him.")
Oh and a Happy New Year to all speculators! The rest of you, who focus on living the Gospel and point out speculating is largely a waste of time, can step off. We get enough of that at Church already!
[Associated Radio Thang song: Noisepie — Hey Mr. Bighead]