“GREAT AND SPACIOUS BLOGGING” SITE ALLOWS LDS LIBERALS, CONSERVATIVES CHANCE TO MOCK, POINT FINGERS AT “MOST MORMONS”

SILICON VALLEY, CA—“Great and Spacious Blogging” is the name of a new blog that allows extreme LDS radicals and conservatives to mock and point fingers at what they consistently call “most Mormons.” Permanent bloggers include disgruntled former BYU professors, University of Utah faculty, and East Coast liberals as well as Idaho survivalists, Anti-Anti Nephi-Lehis (who oppose immigration), and small right-wing paramilitary groups like One Mighty and Strong and the National Righteousness Association.

While the blog features writers with diametrically opposed views, they share a common disdain for “those cow-like, dim-witted, and über-complacent Sunday pew sitters who think that having faith, keeping the commandments, and doing your best is enough.” 

The blog includes a series called “Why all is Not Well in Zion.” This series recently featured posts about how smart, righteous women must wear pants to church as well as how faithful, righteous saints must shun the evils of pants. Both posts made it clear that one’s intelligence and righteousness were contingent upon these actions. Additional posts chided saints for not being able to “Help your Child find that special Gay Life-Partner” or for not “Helping Your Gay Children Experience Sufficient Shame.” 

The blog also features a number of counters. Liberal counters include “How Many Times Boys Commit the Sin of Calling Modest Girls Pure and Attractive,” “Estimated Days Until the Saints are Righteous Enough for God to Give Women the Priesthood and Allow Gays to Marry in the Temple,” and “The Number Of Reasons Why A Critical Faith Is Essential For Salvation.” Counters for conservatives include “Number of Times Something in the World Offends My Spirit,” “Estimated Days until the Saints Are Righteous Enough for God to Restore Mandatory Polygamy,” and “The Number Of Reasons Why Faith In The Second Amendment Is Essential For Salvation.”

One blogger, known as “Ordain Pets Now!” said that, “when someone doesn’t see things correctly, I naturally explain to that poor soul that they have a confirmation bias.” Another blogger, “McConkie’s 700 Deadly Heresies” also noted that “those who should also be ashamed of not seeing things correctly are the willfully blind caught in the mists of darkness deeper than Salt Lake City fog.” Most bloggers say that those who are too cowardly to think like them are too afraid of new ideas or “cognitive dissonance.” Such “weaklings should experience shame that gets them to see things my way.”  

Permanent Bloggers known as “Heavenly Mother Loves Judith Butler” and “It Should be Called Evilution” have both created manifestos that conclude in the same way: “We will not rest until every seemingly content saint, drunk on the fruit that is a failure to understand what is really important, is anxiously engaged in the correct cause—mine!” None of the “most Mormons” could be reached for comment, as they were putting kids to bed, trying to fit in some scripture study time, or having a real life instead of reading blogs. 

TRANSCRIPT OF RECENT “LEAGUE OF DEVOTED SCHOLARS” CONFERENCE PRESENTATION

• Presenter stands
• Computer desktop visible on screen
• Audience member smugly congratulates herself on having a much more organized desktop
• Presenter brings up PowerPoint set-up screen revealing slides with lots and lots of quotes
• Audience member sitting one row in front of previously mentioned audience member quietly asks God to kill audience member now
• Presenter begins with quote from Asian religious text to appeal to LDS crypto-Buddhist scholar from Texas in audience
• LDS crypto-Buddhist scholar from Texas in audience successfully appealed to
• Presenter reads presentation in fervent yet friendly manner that makes words seem like waxy chocolate
• Presenter quotes, more or less successfully, Slavoj Žižek
• Graduate student audience member with ADD ponders Slavoj Žižek, wishes he had those funky squished v things in his name, wishes he at least had those little two dots things in his name, notes how two dots look like textual nostrils, chides himself for not bringing nose hair trimmers, envies how squirrels don’t need nose hair trimmers, mentally remarks to self how ten thousand squirrels in ten thousand years probably could not write The Book of Daniel, concludes that if Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had had a fourth friend his name should have been Žižek, realizes he now has a dissertation topic
• Presenter acknowledges that audience can read quote on slide
• Presenter reads quote on slide
• Presenter begins to build solid argument based on good evidence
• Graduate student audience member feels envious, distraught, and worried, and for the third time today fervently begs God to let him go back to BYU to teach, affectionately thinking of the institution not unlike “the mother ship”
• BYU faculty member seated two rows behind above mentioned audience member compares current job to manure-like misspelling of “ship”
• Presenter makes weak tangential argument to appeal to Feminists
• Feminists in audience feel equal parts offense and forgiveness
• Presenter remembers how glad presenter is about not mentioning Heidegger, as that might cause some to really pay attention
• Presenter again mentions Žižek
• Untenured audience member conflates Žižek, Isaiah, The Cloud of Unknowing, and Eagle Scout project, triggering mild panic attack
• Presenter brings together argument via reason and insight that is clearly the result of hard-work, passion, and commitment
• Audience member, establish scholar whose last name may indicate ancestry with ornithological associations, experiences relief that careful attention has been rewarded and prepares to, as is audience member’s custom, generously encourage presenter
• Audience member with ADD changes dissertation title from “Žižek in Slow Motion: Land of the Lost and the embodiment of Evil in the Sleestaks” to just “Žižek’s Sleestaks” or maybe something about Battlestar Galactica before wondering what is for lunch 
• Presenter concludes to customary tepid courtesy applause
• Presenter equally horrified by prospects of no questions during question and answer period (indicating no one cared or it was so bad no one knows what to say) and any questions during question and answer period (as this would mean presenter may have to answer questions)
• Fellow presenter wonders how to ask question that is generous and insightful, making connections with fellow presenter's presentation, while not being self-serving.  Formulation of this question is the most difficult thing fellow presenter will do all day
• Session ends
• Presenter and audience mingle and chat with the casual nonchalance of sixth graders at their first dance 

SPIRIT WORLD NICKNAMES

Add your nicknames in the comments.

BYUTV GETS EXCLUSIVE TELEVISION COVERAGE RIGHTS OF THE SECOND COMING

The Revelation Will be televised

PROVO, UT—BYUTV director Daniel Clark announced today that they had secured exclusive television coverage rights for the Second Coming. Clark stated that “it had been a priority for us to secure these rights, second only to the rights to Hugh Nibley’s talks and, of course, all of the BYU football games.”

Clark offered a few details about how they planned to cover the triumphal return. He explained, “we have cameras on the ready in many, many key locations.”  Clark outlined how crews are “on the ready 24-7” to get reaction shots from the First Presidency, key world leaders, and “some Miamaids from Bountiful, Utah who will be‘TOTALLY OMG BLOWN AWAY!’”

Clark also mentioned that cameras were prepared near downtown Las Vegas, San Francisco, the University of Utah, and Harry Reid’s office “just to capture the anguished weeping as well as the desperate gnashing of teeth of the wicked.” When questioned about the comments, Clark clarified that it was not “anyone in specific, just, you know, any random super wicked people who might be in the vicinity.”

When asked about the crews themselves, Clark affirmed that “of course we have our elite camera people in key roles.”  Clark elaborated that the “Red-Robe-as-if-stained-by-Lots-of-Grape-Juice group is our most important.”  “We have to have our best people,” stated Clark, “for this crew.  We cannot afford to lose a camera because someone had had Dr. Pepper in the last year or who paid tithing on the net instead of the gross.”  

STAKE PRESIDENT THREATENS TO REVOKE WARD’S “TRUE AND LIVING” STATUS

COLUMBUS, OH—Speaking at the ward conference of the Columbus, Ohio 12^th ward, Stake President Gabe Paulsen called upon members to repent or the ward would lose its “True & Living” status. President Paulsen said that the ward’s 9% home teaching rate “was on the low side,” but that the 87% visiting teaching rate was “far below the Lord’s standard.”

President Paulsen enumerated other factors that threatened to reduce the ward to the probationary “Plausible & Not Quite Dead Yet” status. “This ward is not failing in all aspects,” explained President Paulsen. “Yes, 87% of the high priests slept through their group meeting and 38% of the Gospel Doctrine lesson came from the blog “Philosophies of Men Spiced up with Scripture,” he noted, “but it is the measly 59% of Young Women lessons that dealt with the specifics of modesty that really shows this ward’s steady slide into iniquity.” 

Some visiting leaders from the stake noted that the discrepancies that President Paulsen mentioned, including a “lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Sharing Time chorister,” involved only the sisters in the 12^th ward.  Sources close to President Paulsen quietly clarified that “the sisters are really the only spiritual ones,” adding that “if the men just show up, we call it good.” 

Before leaving the ward, President Paulsen reminded them of what this drop in status might mean.  “We all know what happened to the former 8^th Ward,” said President Paulsen ominously, “and none of us, I mean none of us, wants to end up a Presbyterian!”