Ironhold

*Chubby Checker* is still waiting to get in, yet acts like Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, Tupac, and Biggie got in on their first years of eligibility. Meanwhile, many acts who do get in find out that only select members are being inducted, regardless of overall contribution. For example, KISS refused to attend the ceremony because only the founding four members were inducted, as they felt that every member of the group should be in the Hall; this is a pretty big deal, as Gene Simmons & Vinnie Vincent hate each other yet Gene essentially stood up for Vinnie in this regards. It'd probably take several years at this point for the Hall to get back on track regarding bands and non-performers who have long since earned their spot yet have been forced to wait.

Front man for pseudo-punk group Green Day. Green Day was popular in the late 1990s, and their song "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" was an anthem at high school graduations in the early 2000s despite it being a break-up song. However, the band belly-flopped into politics in the mid-2000s with their "American Idiot" album, which included the vomitous "Wake Me Up When September Ends", a song so bad that most old-school punk rock fans officially excommunicated them from the punk scene. Despite this, Green Day was voted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on their very first year of eligibility to a great many protests. The band hasn't been relevant to the scene in almost a decade, there are maybe five songs from their entire catalog that classic and active rock stations will still bother to play, and few fans of actual punk will admit to owning anything newer than their early 2000s releases.

In late 1988 / early 1989, Orion Pictures contacted Al about having his own theatrical release. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UHF_(film) The film, a slapstick comedy known as "UHF", opened during the infamous Summer of 1989, alongside such movies as: Tim Burton's "Batman" "Lethal Weapon 2" "Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade" "Dead Poet's Society" "Robocop 2" "James Bond: License To Kill" Et cetra. Vanity projects like "UHF" and Hulk Hogan's "No Holds Barred" were absolutely crushed at the box office. Al's 1988 "Even Worse" album and his rendition of "Peter and the Wolf" had been massively popular, but the lukewarm reception to his first Greatest Hits album and now "UHF" being a flop cost him his forward momentum. He would take a few months to collect himself, and then began work on what would be his 1992 comeback album "Off The Deep End". The album was such a success that Al was under pressure from his label to quickly produce a follow-up. A greatest hits album and "The Food Album", both hastily-done compilations of existing songs, were shoved out the door so that Al could put together "Alapalooza": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alapalooza . The album was very obviously done in haste, much as 1986's "Polka Party" had been, and so it met with mixed reactions from critics and fans alike. The same financial pressures that led to his label throwing so much material out the door in the wake of "Off The Deep End" led to them throwing even more out the door between 1993 and 1996, including an anthology boxed set, a second official greatest hits album, and "The TV Album" compilation. This sheer amount of product, combined with the smash success of "Bad Hair Day", caused "Alapalooza" to be quickly forgotten.

A cover version of the song was gaining popularity around the time the first "Jurassic Park" movie was released, which is why he used it for the parody. It's the same reason why he used "American Pie" as the basis for a parody song about Star Wars Episode I, as a then-recent cover of the song had put it back in the spotlight, and with the song as long as it was he felt it the perfect fit.

I was politely asked to let a sister take over as teacher because she needed experience with public speaking; English wasn't her first language, and so she lacked confidence in talking to others. I stayed in the class anyway, helping out as needed to make things easier for her.

It may also happen that it is for someone else to harvest the seeds you plant. Likewise, even if you "only" plant a single seed, there's no telling how great a plant will arise.

Once upon a time I spent about 18 months teaching the Gospel Principles class. Officially, I was to go through the book on an endless cycle to ensure that everyone got the full load of lessons before moving into regular Sunday school. In reality, I'd start each Sunday by asking if anyone had any questions, and several times it so happened that *answering* that question took the entire scheduled block. Other times it'd happen that I'd have to spend 2 - 3 Sundays on the same lesson because there was *that* much for someone new to try and comprehend, and they needed the help understanding it.

Speaking as someone with an MBA? All too often, the higher a person goes into academia, the more divorced they become from the world *outside* of academia. This is because they frequently end up insulated from life beyond the Ivory Tower, associating only with other academics who often have similar opinions and lifestyles. If they spend too much time like this, they can actually develop a contempt for people who don't have their same level of academic credentials, and may even be so arrogant as to declare that people who aren't on their "level" shouldn't even have the right to speak to them about various topics and should merely sit & listen to their "betters". Such a mindset appears to be especially prevalent in the humanities and social sciences. To be brutally honest, two of the most willfully ignorant people I ever encountered were individuals who had doctoral degrees in their respective fields (social sciences and theology, respectively). They treated their doctorates as shields of invulnerability, and refused to listen to even credible, reputable sources when it came to information that contradicted their personal biases about how the world worked.

This past Sunday the YSA branch I help out at did a somewhat awkward bit on Samuel and Saul. Don't know if this is where we should have been as I am reading the scriptures on my own schedule (one chapter of each of the four main works a week), but there we are.

It depends upon each person's individual narrative. For example, the other day a political cartoonist did a cartoon talking about all of the instances of left-wing violence over the last few years. People were screaming and otherwise losing control because they'd either never heard of any incidents of left-wing violence or were in denial that such incidents had happened. As far as they were concerned, only right-wing groups were engaging in violence.

It happens every few years. As it is, most hurricanes form where the Equator and Prime Meridian meet, which is off the coast of Africa, so that should tell you how the winds blow and how hard they can be.

Okay. The film, in and of itself, is tolerable, and even has a few moments of legitimate humor and sympathy. However... The film opens with a statement proclaiming that the movie is the exact same film that Andy from "Toy Story" saw in 1995 that made him so excited to get a Buzz Lightyear figure for his birthday. This creates several problems with in-franchise continuity, including the film having a contradictory backstory for Zerg and having an LGBT romance when virtually no Hollywood studio would have included an LGBT romance in a "family" movie in the mid-1990s. The movie makes such a mess of things that it's easy to spend the run time trying to reconcile the movie with everything else "Toy Story", and so it's not something I can ultimately recommend. I foresee this film going straight down the memory hole as far as most "Toy Story" fans are concerned.

Going to see "Lightyear" this afternoon for review purposes. We'll see how that goes.

16 June. Heavy winds from Africa, but they're coming from over the Sahara instead of the usual spawning point for Atlantic hurricanes. As a result, the Gulf of Mexico is getting blanketed with Saharan sand, with my area being affected as well. It's been miserable for those of us with allergies, and we're hoping that a potential rain storm this week actually does form so that the sky will be washed clean.

Not sure if this one counts, but - All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite, 15 June 2022 (that is, last night) The main event of the evening was a tag-team ladder match between Jurassic Express (Luchasaurus and Jack Perry) and The Young Bucks (brothers Nick and Matt Jackson). For those who don't know, a ladder match is a type of wrestling match wherein a physical object is suspended over the ring, with a variety of ladders provided so that the wrestlers can climb up to reach it. Whoever gets it first wins. Through parts of the match you could see someone in the audience waving around a sign that had The Young Bucks flanking a ladder and the caption "Ladder Day Saints". At one point, the camera actually cut over to a brief shot of the sign before going back to the match itself. Note that the episode was being filmed in an arena in California. (To my knowledge, the one and only time AEW has performed in Utah was a show in Salt Lake City in March of 2020. Then much of the nation initiated Covid lockdown protocols that very weekend, forcing AEW to retreat to its headquarters in Florida for well over a year; they haven't been back to Utah since.)

The general idea is that would-be missionaries need to be living their lives in accordance with gospel principles, actively reading the scriptures & official church materials, saving up for the cost of their mission, and working on themselves as individuals so that they are better able to function in unfamiliar social situations. In that sense, the advice is sound, and will generally get the average would-be missionary through the bulk of the day-to-day. The issue is when people serve a mission for all the wrong reasons, such as being pressured by their families and/or home congregations. That's when the problems start, especially if these individuals haven't prepared themselves to actually go.

Okay... 10 PM last night: there's so much dust, dirt, and other debris in the air that my sinuses are bleeding 10 AM today: the nurse can't find a good vein for the blood draw, and so my physical examination is now being delayed a week so that I can come back later and try again since the doctor needs my results to get an accurate read on any medical issues I have. Oy. However, the doctor did send me to a local hospital for a fresh set of x-rays of my back and neck (apparently, the physical therapist who looked at my last set misread them and exaggerated the extent of my injuries), and is going to refer me to a series of specialists who are in-system for my insurance once he gets that good read on what help I actually need.

One proposal I've seen is for each school in the US two have two military veterans, veterans who have passed extensive background checks, hired on as on-site armed security. The logic is that it's jobs for veterans and a greatly increased security presence.

Here's an oldie but a goodie: https://www.ldsliving.com/anime-series-depicts-salt-lake-temple-as-home-of-the-gods/s/86060 In Japan, there's a popular fantasy franchise called "Restaurant To Another World". The premise of the franchise is that a random family bistro in Japan is somehow magically connected to various alternate realms through a series of magic portals that spring up on a regular basis. People from these other realms come in, enjoy a taste of local cuisine, wander around outside for a while, and then head home. The series was popular enough to get a single-season adaptation, with several individual stories from the source material being adapted. In one episode, the realm in question is the "Home of the Gods". Someone at the animation studio used the Salt Lake Temple as the image for the actual physical castle the various deities resided in.

There's both a metal bull to represent a "bull" or economically strong market, and a metal bear to represent a "bear" or economically weak market. They're actually, physically traded out given economic situations, a visual reminder of what the state of the national economy is. If you'll recall, a few years ago there was a bit where someone tried to do a "girl power" - themed statue for that plaza to encourage women in the work force, but the people responsible for erecting the statue made the mistake of positioning the statue so that she was staring down the bull. This was promptly ridiculed and mocked by more than a few people (myself included), as it sent the inadvertent message that the presence of "empowered" women was impeding the American economy by preventing it from running freely, something that completely contradicted whatever message the creators wanted to send about women in Corporate America. Last I heard, the "girl power" statue was permanently removed because of this negative reaction.

Basically, we're at the point where both sides are getting into propaganda campaigns, and those campaigns are getting to the point where they're all but encouraging violence against the other side. That's never a good thing.

I think most of the regulars here know my story, but for those who missed it, I'll explain - My maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's during my senior year of high school. My two older brothers had basically drained my parents' finances with their college ambitions, and thanks to a series of ugly behind-the-scenes snafus my parents were barely able to finance the nursing home my grandmother was in. Even with her being in a home, my mom and dad were up there at different points of the day to feed her because as she got more debilitated she had trouble eating on her own. Furthermore, the last several years of my life to that point had been something of a nightmare, and so I was dealing with a number of then-undiagnosed mental and physical health issues that would have made me horribly unsuited for two years in a shirt and tie. Even though my local leadership was sounding the drum beat of "All young men must go on missions, and all young women must regard any young man who didn't serve as ineligible for marriage", I made the decision that I would stay home and attend a local community college, thereby allowing me to help my parents while saving them some money. I would wind up turning the internet itself into my de facto mission field, joining with the other early pioneers and as such doing a *lot* to make it safe for the Bloggernacle as we know it now. I myself had several threats of violence against me because of it, and had multiple ministers singling me out. So in that sense, I did "serve". This very forum exists because I and others cleared room for it to exist. Your hypothetical individual could probably also find a way to serve that's not a "traditional" mission. Plus, we also need to remember that every person who is a member of the church has an ongoing obligation to spread the gospel, regardless of whether or not they have a tag on. That being said... My life has been pretty miserable. Due to the drum beat the local and stake leadership was maintaining, there was no understanding, only gossip as to why I didn't go and various leaders who basically made it clear that they didn't regard me as a proper member of the church. The fact that I gave up Rutgers and BYU to help my parents also got me a lot of scorn. So many doors were closed to me, most closed *forever* by my decision to help my parents, that I haven't had much of a life IRL. Even my own parents frequently used me to vent because I was convenient. I'm 38, and so much of my life feels like nothing more than sand between my fingers because I didn't have that support network I needed when I needed it and I had to shoulder so much on my own, leading to me essentially having no major life accomplishments. Yes, I have an MBA. But I'm still living with relatives and make so little I'll likely never live on my own. Throw in multiple debilitating medical issues, and I'm just so, so tired... So if your friend does decide to forego a formal mission, and instead finds something more suited to what they're able to do and are comfortable with, you will need to have their back and support them, especially if their local and stake leaders are incessant about pushing formal missionary service. People may not understand why they make the choices they make, and so they may not be as socially welcomed as they ought to be. edit - Yes, I'll admit to also making a lot of poor choices at times. Some were because I lacked needed experience and so didn't understand. Others were because circumstances required me to act in the moment and I didn't choose the correct option. Some were because I was just an idiot at that point and didn't think things through. Many were "I have an issue, and I can't get anyone to listen, so what's the best way of doing things?" without realizing that my chosen solution had a lot of flaws that would just make things worse. There was also a whole lot of "just feeling empty inside" and not wanting to feel that way anymore. I'm doing what I can to make peace with my past while trying to move forward (I actually have an appointment for a physical examination tomorrow morning, if all goes well), but as things stand there's far more "sideways" and "backwards" than "forward".

There are multiple reports flying around on different social media platforms, and I haven't had a chance yet to see if it's the same report redone or multiple facilities. But it seems a counter-narrative is forming claiming that the "pro-abortion" crowd is willing to engage in violence, and so people need to watch out.

A center? I'm hearing reports of multiple centers being hit.

How did a blown head gasket lead to you needing to drop in a new engine? You might want to speak with another mechanic for a second opinion, if possible.