Made in the USA

On Friday I bought a plastic pitcher for a dollar at Target. I knew I was supporting the importation of junk from nasty and exploitative Chinese factories, but it was such a good deal.
When I got home, I found out that my new pitcher was made in Kansas. Yay!

Brands on Boycott

• WalMart (ruins U.S. industry while hurting Chinese workers as well; floods markets with underpriced goods until competing manufacturers go under; the stores are way too big)
  
• McDonald's (cuts down Brazilian rainforest to graze cattle when there's plenty of meat in the U.S.; too many preservatives; generally gross)
• Taco Bell (bought tomatoes from Florida farmers who exploited laborers—withheld wages, prevented them from leaving, stuff like that; also, way too many urban legends)
• Tommy Hilfiger (sweatshops; ugly clothes)
• Nike (sweatshops; will not allow workers to unionize)
• Marriott hotels, except the Cincinnati ones (one of the biggest distributers of pornography in the world, except in Cincinnati, where public outcry led the Marriott hotels there to remove the porn from the pay-per-view offerings; Cincinnati Marriotts have not gone out of business yet)
  

I looked in the mirror, and what did I see?

I have a namesake who is more than a namesake: a doppelgänger. Not only do we have the same job and therefore the same skills, but we also have the same talents. Throughout my life, I have felt special because I can do a few things that other people cannot do as well. (I cannot do a lot of things that other people can do, like rollerskating, but that's beside the point.) Yet there she is—the Other Beth.
I was hired first, but whilst I was suffering from mononucleosis and working short hours at home, she took all of my special projects and became team lead. I don't mind that she finished my projects, because I was too sick to finish them. However, all of the new projects that would have been mine now go to her, as she is in charge of delegating; her finished projects are not any better or worse than mine, just exactly the same.
When we are both in the office, uneasy air vibrates between us as if two Beths cannot exist in such close proximity. I am the superfluous shriveled remains of her conjoined twin.
I irritate her as much as she irritates me. Our smiles to each other are more paste than pathos, and she makes a point to contradict our boss when he suggests that she give me more responsibilities.
Were life like literature, one of us would kill the other and restore balance to the universe.

Excerpt from My Latest Novel-in-progress: A BYU Dating Drama in Five Acts

This episode from my latest novel-in-progress is based, nearly exactly, on a call-opening I witnessed as a freshman. I thought it was rather unique until I saw this glowing example of bad parenting on a BBS.
So enjoy, "The Mission Call":

“So, Gideon, tell me about yourself,” Abby began, and they both knew she was going to ask the BYU equivalent of name, rank, and serial number: hometown, major, and mission. “Where are you from?”

“Newport Beach, California,” he answered smoothly, as if his hometown was not famous for being the home of the lately popular teen drama The OC. Newport Beach, California, was slightly less famous, even in the Mormon world, for being the site of a beautiful temple built on multimillion-dollar land with money entirely out of the pockets of the local members of the Church.

Abby decided to play this revelation as cool as Gideon was, “Cool. Um,” she paused to give the next question an air of originality, “have you chosen a major yet?”

“Economics.” Gideon sighed, he knew what question came next—

“So where’d you go on your mission?”

Gideon considered the answer to that inevitable question to be his second-greatest shame. His greatest and most secret shame was that he was ashamed of where he served his mission. He just had not expected it to be so . . . ordinary.

The opening of the mission call was a rite of passage during the BYU freshman experience. The eighteen- and nineteen-year-old young men waited for their call-opening day and attended their friends’ in solidarity. The young women attended their sweethearts’ call-opening celebrations to watch their boyfriends rip away from them as the envelope flap ripped away from its origin. People often took bets (for which the prize was bragging rights) on where the missionary was to serve—the more exotic, the better.

Gideon’s call carried with it all the promised revelry. It came on a Thursday in November; the mail was delivered at three in the afternoon, and Gideon rushed home from class four to check the mailbox, as he done every day since he submitted his papers to Salt Lake two weeks previous. There was the precious letter! It was a thick white 9×13" envelope addressed to “Elder Gideon Abbott” with “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” printed in the top left-hand corner.

Through his roommate Jon Grant, who had received his call to Montreal the Thursday before, mass text messages announced the good news:

Gideon got his
call! He opens it
seven tonight.
Come!

And so a crowd gathered in his tight kitchen at Heritage Halls, BYU’s apartment-style freshman dorms. By seven-fifteen, enough people were squished in the room that they nearly touched, though not quite. Gideon’s parents and sister were on speakerphone. Triumphant, he held up the heavy envelope for all to see as his friends called out their guesses: “Peru!” “Ghana!” “You’re so smart, you’ll go to Finland!” “New York City, Spanish-speaking!” “Fiji!” “Maybe you’ll go to Montreal with me!”

Finally, a lull settled over the crowd. Gideon’s heart swelled with pride has he brought the envelope to his breast and methodically lifted the seal. He pulled out the letter—straight from President Hinckley himself—and read aloud, covering most of it so he could not read ahead:

“Dear Elder Abbott: You have been called to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in—”

The gathered friends—now seriously intruding on each other’s personal space—stomped their feet and pounded the table and purred with their tongues.

Gideon uncovered the rest of the letter and glanced over it. He tried to keep the smile on his face.

“Well, where’re you going?” someone shouted.

“Honey, what does it say?” came Sister Abbott’s tinny voice from Gideon’s cellphone speaker.

After a deep, steadying breath, Gideon read: “Portland, Oregon, English-speaking.”

Three seconds passed empty.

Again, Gideon’s mother’s disembodied voice spoke, “Oh. That’s nice.”

“Yeah!” whooped Jon, failing to regain his former enthusiasm, “Gideon’s going to Porrrrrt-land!”

“Whoo hoo,” echoed the crowd, mustering a few seconds of metallic applause.

Sarah Jensen, the girl Gideon had been dating since the middle of September, offered Gideon a “Congratulations, you’ll be great,” and a platonic hug. “I’ve gotta go do H-work now,” she apologized.

“Me, too.” John Wilson, a friend from down the hall, clapped Gideon on the back and followed Sarah out.

Soon Jon and Gideon were alone in the dorm kitchen. The Abbotts were still on the line: “Well, Son—good luck,” began Brother Abbott in a hearty voice, “My mission in Kyoto was the best experience of my life.”

Parents and son chatted for a few more minutes, but just before he pressed End, Gideon heard his mother ask his father, “Oh, Dave, can’t you call someone? The poor boy’s devastated!”

Souvenir Central

I could remove the glare from this photo if my Adobe Creative Suite 3 had not frozen in the middle of activation on a weekend!
Oh yeah, and I've added a freefrom biscuit box underneath the Reporter flyer, but I'm too lazy to take another picture.

It's Natural

This afternoon while walking home from work, I saw a vast expanse of lush green grass sprinkled with little white and pink wildflowers. (I took my camera out of my purse again, so I couldn't take a picture.)
My objections to growing Kentucky Bluegrass in a desert aside, I was very glad that the landscaper had chosen to let the flowers grow. Many lawn owners here in the Mountain West have declared war on their yards. They take a beautiful, rugged landscape and lay sod. Then they (futilely) poison and mow and weed-pull and hair-pull and water, water, water, water to create a perfect square of two-inch-high green grass in front of their houses. I've heard some people question their neighbors' patriotism and respect when the neighbors' lawn is not uniform.
Nature does not like to be limited in this way. She knows that uniform is not beautiful, so she fights back with wildflowers and beetles and hot weather. I think we should let her win, especially with the wildflowers.

'Twas the Night before Independence Day

Tonight I saw an amazing sight in Provo, Utah. The usually buttoned-up main drag, University Avenue, on which the only action is traffic is bursting with life. Families are sleeping in tents along the strip of grass separating the Provo High parking lot from the street. Some of the families have generators, and their children are watching Mulan on small televisions.
They can't be getting much sleep, though, because motorcycle gangs with varying toughness are driving up and down University Avenue revving their engines at every red light.
Down in front of the Provo Library, a huge group of high schoolers and UVU students are partying to poppy hip-hop music. My neighborhood's movers and shakers set up across the street from the library: in front of the old BYU women's gymnasium-turned CTR thrift shop. We played Spaz Uno and that hand-slapping game around an enormous LoveSac while Jesse grilled hot dogs on a portable grill and James chilled on a recliner. Tim "the Arab" Hansen gave rides on his new motorbike.
I met a scruffy physics major who spent last summer hitchhiking through Europe. It's funny how close I can get to a random person late at night when I'm scared to touch people I've known forever.
Anyway, about an hour ago a group of dumb kids started slinging water balloons over the road and into the dancers by the library. They forgot how mad suburban white hip-hoppers can get. A delegation of dancers crossed the street to take the sling shot. Things got ugly, somebody was eventually kicked in the crotch, and everyone felt better.
Two police cars showed up at this altercation, which was more than the one who walked my friends and the Smith's shopping cart they were playing with back to the grocery store. Ahhh, Provo police must be sick of dealing with Young People. They don't really do much else.
The bottom line is that the Fourth of July really is the Mormon Mardi Gras, as Jeff suggested. It's patriotic, family oriented, and substitutes large amounts of explosives for large amounts of booze. Before I saw University Avenue tonight, I thought Utahans who obsessed over the Fourth were exaggerating.

Too Tired to Eat, Too Hungry to Sleep

My life is sometimes very boring, I have discovered.
The news is depressing, but the end of Pretty in Pink is worse.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 May Be the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me

Lessons I learned on Saturday:

• The Provo Farmers' Market lacks farmers and isn't much of a market, either.
• Lehi, Utah is a pretty town in a stark setting.
  
• The most likely looking loop on the Google map is not, in fact, the Alpine Loop, but a very long ATV trail.
• Ford Tauruses are not meant to drive on ATV trails.
• Rolling one car tire over a huge rock in the middle of the trail balances the other wheel against the steep embankment to the side of the trail, thus preventing both flipping the car by driving on the embankment and catching the undercarriage on the large rock.
• Bouncing along a rough trail for four hours gives one a splitting headache.
• God really does protect His daughters and their cars from dying in the Uintahs, even when their predicament is kinda their fault (not the cars' fault, the daughters').
• Pavement is the most wonderful substance on earth.
  
• Sonic is heaven and lime slushes are ambrosia.
• Exboyfriends who babble about taxes when they are nervous remind one how nice it is to be single.
• Exboyfriends should be banned from having attractive roommates. It's just mean.
  
• I'm hot 'cause I'm fly; you ain't 'cause you're not.