Mormonism and Uppity Negros…

On my next to last night working at Movies 10, I had the extreme pleasure of working with hunky-boy. Again. Yay! (Wow, that sounds very girly…) Anywho, as I was stuck cleaning the popper and he was sweeping the floor, we had a nice discussion about Mormonism. He’s pretty knowledgeable about its history and stuff, which meant he could answer the majority of my questions (and I always have plenty of questions about religion). That’s better than most run-of-the-mill Catholics or Protestants (or those from branches of the above) can tell me. Hunky-boy also told that he believes everything his instructors have taught him. He said it all “fits”. While I want to give him the benefit of the doubt for a seemingly blinder faith (although all faith is blind, by definition, I know) than others I have met (for obvious reasons, hence the label of “hunky-boy”), I’m not sure that I can. Oh, well, he is a Boy Scout. *smile*

All Mormon boys, when they turn 19, go on a two-year mission trip somewhere in the world. The church’s headquarters pick the location, and the family must pay for the trip, as you cannot have a job or earn money while you are there (you’re supposed to focus on conversion). This is $10 000, usually. Another thing: Mormon families are typically large. I believe hunky-boy has 6 siblings… That’s a hell of a lot of money. He was also telling about the college most Mormons attend: Brigham-Young University in Utah (there is one in Idaho and another in Hawaii, I think). Because the guys must go their mission when they turn 19, they usually attend a year of college, go off somewhere, come back and finish their remaining two years. So everyone at Brigham-Young is about 2 years behind in education than other colleges, technically. The Mormon girls go on mission trips as well, but I don’t remember the age at which they go.

Why am I giving a lesson on Mormonism? Hell if I know. I’ve decided not to post my rap music post yet (if at all) because it just didn’t sound like I wanted it to. There was no driving point, and was just sort of a blah-blah post about ostracism in our society based upon music that kept coming back to race. Maybe I’ll polish it off and post it anyway, I dunno.

I am working my way through the old archives of Uppity-Negro.com, however. I’m in late September of 2001 now, and when I finish these, I’ll go into the more modern archives (when he stared using Moveable Type as his blog app). Still great stuff. The link for the old archives is on the right, and is labeled “Negro What?”.

And so I’m off to write more essays and then watch Chicago for the second time. BTW, my mother finally came home Thursday.