Disappointing

From: here, what is wrong with America.

What the hell is wrong with you? Are you really going to wear that? Why aren't you right now cooking me a nice meal and wearing those hot boy shorts you know I love and saying those words you know I want to hear at exactly the moment I like to hear them, to make me feel better about everything, even though I probably won't?

Not done yet:

Love. Sex. Marriage. Stock market. God. Gas mileage. Death. Air travel. 5/9ths of the Supreme Court. It's all just a big goddamn letdown. The list is endless. And getting endlesser.

Still not yet:

Do not come at me with tantalizing promises only to reveal that you can fulfill most of them to a fairly good degree, and not far exceed all of them in every imaginable way. We're Americans, goddammit. Ye shall know us by the tang of our bitter and untenable jadedness.

Just a little more:

That guy, that President Obama? Disappointing times a thousand, am I right? What the hell happened to him? Why is he so weak and ineffectual? Why the hell can't he step up and fix the entire planet in under 400 days like he promised he would, in my dreams and fantasies and impossible liberal grass-fed organic tofu greengasms? Doesn't he know I put a goddamn bumper sticker on my Subaru for him? I've never done that for anyone. Bastard.

This is it:

Maybe this, then, is the ultimate upshot of our endless, self-wrought swirl of sour disappointment, of never having our impossible needs fully met, of constantly being thwarted in our desire to have the world revolve around our exact set of specifications and desires.

Our disappointment begins to curdle, to turn back on itself, poison the heart, turn us nasty and low. It shifts from merely being a national mood or general temperament, into a way of being. A wiring, deep and harmful and permanent. It's all very disappointing, really.

Sabbath Thoughts

Bob, aren't you proud of me? I made it all the way until Elders Quorum before I started reading the New York Times on my phone. -- Me.

I often find church up in NorCal empty and pointless. I am almost 100% certain that it is just a reflection of me, where I am in my life, and what I bring each Sunday. Everyone else tells me how great the ward is--how much I should love it. Well, I don't, really.

So in order to squeeze some sort of meaning out of those hours, I try to make up some sort of inner dialogue that is loosely connected with the topic at hand. On Sunday, the last few words from Conan's last show stuck in my head:

Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you are kind, amazing things will happen. I'm telling you, amazing things will happen.

If I heard that same thing spoken verbatim over the pulpit, I am sure I would have ignored it. But it means something more in context.

Bad Moods Make You Smart

I knew it. Article here.

Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages.

Remember, negative attracts positive and repels negative--double win!