A Series of Unfortunate Events

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a great set of books.  They are some of the most depressing children's books I have ever read but they are great.

There are 13 books in total in the series and they are all fabulous.  So why do I blog about them?  These books tell the story of three orphans and all the bad things that happen to them but also all the times when they surmount all odds to escape peril narrowly.  Often times they escape it in ways that they wouldn't exactly desire.  The last book though is where it is all concluded...well a small portion of it anyways.  You won't find out for instance why does Count Olaf keep killing people over a sugar bowl but the point of the author is concluded there.  It is all summed up in one phrase, "[Our parents] didn't want to shelter us from the world's treacheries.  They wanted us to survive them."

God didn't send us here to shelter us from all that's horrible in the world.  He sent us down here to survive them.  And like these books he has provided us many things to help us survive them.  These books, if you can survive 13 books of tragedy after tragedy, contain many great little treasures in them.  They're short and easy to read as well.  I finished them in a month.  That was only spending one to two hours a day reading them too.    I loved these books because of the great messages that are portrayed in them.  You guys all need to read these books.

Brave Little Toaster Part II

So last time we talked about some of the spiritual messages of The Brave Little Toaster.  Now we shall revisit that topic.  There are a few points that I would like to expound upon.  First off while they're waiting for their master, they see a sign that the place is going to be sold.  So they lose hope and so instead of waiting for their master they go on a journey to go find him.  He now lives in the city of "lights."  Now the fact that their Master represents God at times is very apparent in the song City of Light.  I shall quote a few of the lines.

Master is a man with a plan I can understand
Master is a man of great reflection
Master is a man who lays his hand across the land
Master is the man of our affection

Let's replace Master with God.  It fits perfectly into the song.

So they go on this journey and some of the middle part of the movie is fluff and stuff like that.  When they get to the apartment though there are newer appliances.  These appliances though are much vainer than they are and are high class ones.

In the song they sing, they talk about being on the cutting edge.  Here are some lyrics:

More! More! More!
Everything you wanted and more
More! More! More!

It then every so often it mentions the edge.  Then it ends the song with this line.

Everything you dreamed of on the edge
And more

The whole song is a metaphor of living on the edge and how the newer fancier appliances represent the unfaithful.  In the end it wasn't the perks or how good the appliances were with their jobs but how faithful they were.

 In the end he saves them from destruction nearly killing himself doing so.  He has a deep love for his appliances.  So deep that he nearly kills himself to save them.  While in the end it is the Toaster that sacrifices himself to save the Master, it is the Master who eventually repairs Toaster from a destroyed state to a pristine state.  Only the Master has the power to restore us even though we are broken beyond all repair, he can fix us.

Brave Little Toaster

Ok so basically, one of the best cartoon movies of all time, Brave Little Toaster, is full of awesomeness.  I grew up on this movie and even though there was this guy that scared the POO outta me.

Anyways, this movie is deep.  What do I mean?  I mean it's literally saturated with gospel messages.  We'll start from the beginning of the movie.

The plot of the movie is that of some house hold appliances whose master left now they are waiting for his return.  They don't know when he'll return so they make sure the house is always spotless.

Well we already have something right there.  The appliances obviously represent the faithful who are waiting for the Master's return.  Among the appliances is one, Air Conditioner, who doesn't believe that the master will return.

He blows a fuse or something and is "broken" until the Master comes back and fixes him up showing that no matter how messed up, if we let the Master into our lives, his hands can fix us.  Want more Brave Little Toaster spiritual messages?  Come back for some more.

Tricky Door Chain

Ok, so this door chain, ROCKS!  I was looking stuff up on google, and Cami reaches over, deletes my search and enters, "Tricky Doors"  This came up.  Yeah, I know, my wife is awesome.  Now, to find one more complicated.

Please if you do happen to find any more like this, post it in the comments.

Outside the Covenant

Ok, so in my Old Testament class we went over the whole book of Deuteronomy.  In this class we the students guide the discussion.  Before each class period we spend 30 minutes in the assigned reading.  Our teacher doesn't care if we read only one verse, or all the verses twice, as long as we spend 30 minutes in the assigned reading.  He then assigns four students to prepare a question or a topic to discuss in class.  This means an awesome class as I can get more out of my homework due to the fact that I'm not rushing through chapters.

Anyways, so we get through the topics the students wanted to discuss pretty fast and so he turns our attention to Deuteronomy 7:3-4.  So he has us read verse 3.  Ok so don't marry outside the church.  Then he tells us to read verse 4 very carefully.  "For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods:"

Alright so in verse three he says, don't give your daughters to people outside the covenant, nor take their daughters and give them to your son.  In verse four though, notice something is missing.  He specifically says that they will turn away thy son.  Basically Moses is saying, "Look don't let your daughters marry their sons or your sons marry their daughters because if you do, we're going to lose all the sons."

My teacher went on to tell us how he did a little research in his ward when he was bishop.  He said that out of 117 married couples in the ward, 30 were married to non-members.  12 were women.  Of the twelve women, 4 were active.  Out of the 18 men, guess how many were active.  Yeah, you're right a big whopping zero.  So he decided to get the numbers for the stake.  Out of 888 married couples 168 were married to non-members.  Of those 90 were female.  Of the ninety, 20 were active.  Of the 78 males, guess how many were active, that's right zero.  So my teacher called up Salt Lake and shared his experience and asked them a few questions.  He found out that in general, 20% of women that marry non-members stay active.  That means that 80% of all women that marry non-members fall away.  Of the men only 1% stay active.

I must repeat Moses's words.  Parents, don't let your kids marry outside the church because you'll lose most your daughters, but you'll lose all your sons.

Hot TANG!!!

Ok so I don't really like hot tang...but look at this website.  It has a nice list of Tang flavors (most can't be found in the USA sorry fellas)  But just check out what you're missing.  If they had all these flavors up here, good BYE kool-aid!  Here's the site.

Please note I have tried almost half of these flavors on this list and Cashew is one of my favorites along with strawberry and passion fruit.  Although REAL passion fruit juice is SO amazing.  It really helps me calm down and focus.  Anyways, just check out the flavors and BE jealous.

My Little Pony

OK, so what the freak, why does Jacob's blog have a blog titled, "My Little Pony?"  Well simply because of this article.  Yeah, My Little Pony made front page news in the Wall Street Journal.

Anyways, I digress.  My Little Pony is a toy for little girls and I'm sure almost all people of the female race and men who have had sisters know of these toys.  What I didn't know was that there was a cartoon for it in the 80's, nor did I know that they were making a new cartoon for it until Cami's friends posted a picture on her Facebook wall tagging each pony as a member of her group of friends.  So they told Cami to watch the show because one of the ponies depicted her very well.  So one night as we were lying in bed Cami turns to me and says, "I wanna watch My Little Pony."

"OK..."

"My friends said I'm one of the ponies and told me to watch it and I don't want to watch it by myself."

Anyways, I failed in my husbandly duties and laid next to her and watched it out of the corner of my eye.  I know I failed and feel horrible about it.  But that's not the point of the story.  The first episode was to be continued so Cami watched the next episode.  Once again my "manliness" got in the way and I didn't really give it my full attention.  Cami liked it though and a few days later I reflected upon it and said to myself, "You know I don't know if it was all that bad."

So days later I'm bored out of my head because my lovely wife is off at work.  I break down and watch episode three.  My thoughts afterwards, Wow, it's not that bad at all.  So a few days later Cami wants to watch it.  So I sit down and re-watch episode three.  Afterwards she tells me she wants to watch another one she liked it so much, so we did.  By that time I liked the show.  After the fifth and sixth episode I was hooked. I can't explain why I like the show.  Perhaps it's the innocence of it all.  Perhaps it's the story line.  Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for cute little animals like bunnies, kitties, puppies, especially my little outlaw dog that I miss so dearly, and other cute little animals.  Whatever the reason is, I like it and have been able to convince my old roommate, Daniel to watch it too.  He was hooked by episode one.  One last thing, men who wear pink are the ones who have nothing to fear about their sexuality and I must say the same thing for My Little Pony.

So pony up and take my challenge.  Watch the first 5 episodes and see if you don't like it.  If you don't, no skin off my bones.  If you do, well then welcome to the herd!  Video is included here at the bottom.

(Note:) It may be hard to watch it here on my blog, so just in case there is a link at the bottom of the blog

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6sUJR1GiGI

Haunted Mill

Tonight Cami, her friend Debra, her husband Mike, his brother, and I went to the Haunted Mill.  It was super fun although I was a little disappointed that the girls didn't scream very much.  There was much to make up for it though as Cami had a conversation with one of the actors.  It consisted of, "UUUUUnnnnggg!"

"UUUUUUUnnnnNNNggGHH!"
"UUUUUGGGGG!"
"RAWRRRRRRRR!"
"WAAAAAAARRRRGGG!"
"I love you!"
"UNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!"

Oh yes and not to forget this was the same actor that after lunging out at us at the little fire to warm us up, she said, "You look like an orc...no more like an orc mated with an Ent."  Only my Cami Lynn.  Another guy tried to scare her and she just looked him in the mask and said, "Your breath smells like Tic Tacs."  Oh it was fun.

At another part we went down this tunnel crawling on our hands and knees and I got way ahead of them.  So while Cami was winding her way through the tunnel, her best friend, Debra, put her hand on Cami's butt so that she could follow...well her hand went into Cami's pants on accident and I guess she grabbed Cami's undies instead.  Anyways when she finally emerged I gave her a soft tap on her behind and it freaked out Debra because she thought I was an actor.  There was also a suspension bridge, you know the ones on shows like Idiana Jones where they ALWAYS collapse...well I jumped on it while everyone was crossing.  I know, I'm a jerk but it was too fun.

Then at the midway point with the toilet, this guy jumped out of it at Debra and I guess his mask accidentally touched her face and tickled her.  But she jumped and freaked out anyways.  Well that was that.  Many people jumping out at us.  Many of us jumping.  Of course I was the man of the group and went first...which meant most people didn't jump out at me.  Heh heh heh.

Growing Up

I like cartoons. Recently I was told to grow up for watching cartoons. Now it happened over the internet so I don't rather care much what that person thinks, but it got ME thinking about what is growing up and what is maturity. I remembered an essay by one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis called "On Three Ways of Writing For Children" Amazing essay by the way. He talks about three ways to write a children's book. One is to write what the child wants. He goes on to say all the reasons that he believes that this is wrong. The third way is that he writes what he enjoys in life. He writes a story that he enjoys and coincidentally kids like it too. In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, he has Lucy eating some nice treats at the hands of the faun Mr. Tumnus. A man once said to him, ah I see, because it's a children's book you put in food to appeal to the children whereas if you were writing an adult book you would have put in sex. C.S. Lewis states in the essay that, that simply isn't true and that the reason he put the food in there is because it is something he would quite enjoy.


So where is this going? Ah, so in the time of C.S. Lewis fantasy novels and fairy tales were childs' tales. Not something for adults right? We're grown up after all, right? I'll now summarize in my own words, his response.


What is growth? Growth is the act of adding to something. A snowball increases in size as it rolls down a hill, a tree adds rings to its trunk as it grows outwards. Growth is the act of addition. Maturity is the act of enriching. Much like the parable of the talents, the mature man adds talents to his collection. Now lets apply this new idea to growing up. As a child I hated certain foods with a passion such as beets, onions, meat ,except for hamburger (not just the sandwich but the meat) and hot dogs, spinach etc. As I "grew" older, I started to like onions and spinach. I soon like steak and fish. It took awhile for me to like chicken as well. Now that I am grown I like these foods but does this mean that I have stopped loving the foods I loved as a child? Do I now despise watermelon because I have "grown" up? Do I now despise pasta or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No, but I have added to my tastes new tastes.


As a child I enjoyed many books such as Choo Choo the Runaway Engine, or Fishing for Oil, or The Dumb Bunnies. All books meant for little children. As I matured, I started to like bigger books like The Hardy Boys, or Goosebumps. Then as a young teen I started to read Redwall, Harry Potter, and other such novels. Now as an adult I enjoy more classic stories and tales that I couldn't and never would have as a child. Does this mean that I no longer enjoy to read Choo Choo? Do I now despise Mr. Rogers because I'm old. No, I still love the things of my childhood. I still enjoy a good story no matter where it is.


It is my firm belief that someone who lets go of these things and calls them childish has lost one of the most precious things in his life. Childhood is a beautiful time in a person's life where everything is new, wonderful, and awe-inspiring. The woods are magical. The floor in you house is lava. To let go of your childhood and then despise it is to turn your back on innocence and love. It is much like a tree that as it grows, the inner rings rot out and leave the tree an empty shell that at the end of all things is only good the be thrust into the fire.


I will gladly and proudly wear my love of all things, "childish," as a badge of honor upon my breast and challenge anyone to mock me for it. For I will not be dissuaded from my course. 3 Nephi 11:37-38, "37 And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and become as a little child, and be baptized in my name, or ye can in nowise receive these things. 37 And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and become as a little child, and be baptized in my name, or ye can in nowise receive these things.

For those who wish to read this essay it can be read at this link.  Don't worry, it should have the whole thing there.

Reasons I Hate Driving at Rexburg

Ok, so now that I'm married and living far away from campus at BYU-Idaho, it has become a necessity to drive to class everyday.  My wife and I planned to have our classes around the same time so that we don't have to make multiple trips for her classes and then for mine.  After having driven around campus up here for one month I'm already wanting to scream profanities out the window and run down some people.  Thanks Mom and Dad for the upbringing that prevents me from doing such base things.  Anyways, here I shall list some of the reasons and examples of why I hate driving around BYU-Idaho.

1.  Pedestrians are extremely inconsiderate.


Ok, so it takes Cami and I, thirty minutes to get to class.  The most it ever took me walking was fifteen minutes.  Here's why.  It takes us five-ten minutes to get to campus.  It takes us five-ten minutes to find a parking spot and depending where it was, five-ten minutes to get to class.  So it can take us anywhere from 15-30 minutes to get to class.  Now here's the sad part.  I passed a class mate who was at least ten minutes from the classroom.  So we pass him and he gets there before us.  That's not why it's sad though.  The reason it's sad is because we can't get past the crosswalk because there is a steady stream of pedestrians and they won't stop to let the cars go by.  The worst part is that I would have gone many times but the other drivers refuse to nose their way through.  When I walked to class on campus, if I saw that a car had been waiting when I got to the cross walk would stop and wave them through.  The people in the cars have lives too.  I've sat at a cross walk for almost three minutes.  Now that may seem like a small amount of time but in reality, to be waiting for pedestrians, it's a long time.

The worst time was as I said when there was two cars ahead of me and the one in front was turning left.  The pedestrians just kept coming.  There were three instances where there were no pedestrians in the crosswalk and no cars to block her from turning left and she didn't go.  So the pedestrians resumed crossing.  GAH!!!  This happened twice.  On the third time, the lady in front of me and I both finally just passed her on the right.

2.  People are just plain stupid at four way stops.

Just today I pulled up to a four way stop.  The car in front of me had just gone straight.  So the next two cars perpendicular to me start going because they're both going straight when the car on the opposite side of the road starts to go and totally blocks off one of the cars.  Ok now that's just ridiculous.  The jerk.

Other stories include multiple accounts of people arriving to the intersection after me, and they try to go before me.  I can't count how many times Cami and I have almost been hit because of things like this.  We pull up.  We're going straight.  We start going when another person on our left pulls up to the intersection and starts to go.  This happens quite frequently.

3. Jaywalkers...

Now I usually don't care if I jaywalk every once and a while on a residential street where cars only go by once every half hour or in a downtown area where there's no such thing.  At BYU-Idaho jaywalking has become such a problem that they are having "stings" at the school where they have 3-4 cops going around campus JUST pulling over jaywalkers.  I know a personal friend of mine that was fined $80 for jaywalking.  Why are they doing this you ask?  It's because accidents between drivers and pedestrians keep rising year to year, semester to semester.  Now when the accidents increase on a semesterly basis quite consistently you've got a problem.  Now some of it is stupid drivers but I bet a good chunk of it would be eliminated if people would stop running out IN front of drivers.  Just yesterday on my way to class we had some pedestrians walk, not run, walk out in front of our car and expected us to stop.  I honked AND slowed down and they crossed.  Another time a guy started to cross the road and expected that I stop for him even though he was jaywalking.  I just kept going and went right by him as he gave me a dirty look.  No joke, he totally gave me a dirty look.

Now some of you may be like, well Jake quit being such a jerky driver.  I'm not.  When I see that a pedestrian has been waiting at the crosswalk to cross I'll stop and let them across.  I love to be courteous to those that deserve it.  Some courtesy would be nice on the part of others.  Anyways, my rant is over with now.  Have a beautiful snowy day for all those in the rockies and for those not, have a beautiful day anyways.

Wicked

Ok so to start this off I have to tell you about my religion class.  Last religion class we were studying Lot.  Before we go any further, Lot is listed among the righteous in the New Testament even though he did make some poor decisions, but I digress.  Anyways, we were studying the whole deal with his daughters and their date rape.  (That's really the best word for it because poor Lot, or perhaps lucky, Lot was unconscious for the whole thing)  Anyways, his daughters sons became the fathers of the Ammonites, and Moabites.  Now here's the thing our teacher went on to explain that this will be very important.  He then went on to explain that the Ammonites worshiped a fire god called Moloch.  In their worship they would throw babies into a sacred furnace as sacrifice.  Yeah, horribly wicked stuff.

Second part was that he explained about circumcision.  When Abraham received the covenant to perform circumcision he had just entered into the land of Canaan.  There was the center of a lot of the fertility religions at the time.  He went on to explain that basically, and that word is important, they would go to the temple of their goddess, hire a "sacred" prostitute and then have sex to worship their goddess.  This was a form of worship.

Third part is that my accounting professor takes about 5-15 minutes every class time to share a little thought.  (They aren't all that little)  So he talks about some cool stuff and pulls out some quotes from Joseph Smith talking about people that are too righteous to be saved and will be damned, stuff like that.

Next is that it seems that no matter what numbers we create for examples in our accounting class, the number 666 always comes up in some from or another.  We set the interest rates, principle, payments, and lots of other numbers and it crops up.  The funny thing is that our teacher has never really ever had this happen.  He jokingly said, "You guys must be the devil class."  He then went on to say he'd tell us something interesting about that number.

So we embark on a journey that shall cover two weeks.  First he starts off quoting revelation about Christ and the lady that was pregnant.  The first verse is, Revelation 5:12.  It states, "Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing."  He then went on to say that only one man other than Christ has ever received these things but he didn't do a thing to receive them.  Christ was slain and atoned for our sins to receive all these things.  He then talks about how the Whore (great and abominable church) dresses up just like Aaron did.  She's arrayed to look like a priest of the church.  She like the pregnant lady represents a church and it's Satan's church.  Much like Christ has a bride (the church), Satan has a whore (Babylon).


Ok, next week.  We talk about a few other things that expound on what he just said.  Now, just this Tuesday he goes to the verse that mentions the whole 666 thing.  Revelation 13:18  "Here is wisdom.  Let him who has understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.  He then turned us to 1 Kings 10:14.  Here is wisdom, he asked us who was famous for his wisdom; Solomon.  It's interesting that the numbers match, but that's not the worst of it.


He then told us to go find some verses that showed just how evil Solomon was.  I found the scripture in 1 Kings 11:5.  Here it states that he worshiped the goddess of fertility that would later be known among the Greeks as Aphrodite, and he worshiped, Milcom (or Moloch).  Solomon had gone so far off the path that he was worshiping a god that required infant sacrifice.


I was like wow, I never realized exactly how evil Solomon had become.  My teacher then went on to explain that Solomon is an example of what the anti-christ would be like.  The ultimate apostate.  He stated that like Satan he split the children of God.  Satan took a third of the host of heaven with him and Solomon's wickedness and taxes eventually caused the split of Israel.  Now if he was a type or example of the anti-christ, then his worship of the two gods makes sense.  Abortion, and sexual promiscuity.


Take it or leave it.  That was what my accounting teacher taught us and to me, it sounds reasonable.  I just thought I'd share this little nugget that he gave us.  Feel free to comment up a storm and get on a gospel discussion.

Booing

Cami, her friend Debra, her husband Mike, his brother Jared, and I tonight went Booing.  It's basically Halloween door bell ditching but you leave them cookies.  SO much better than door bell ditching.  So we booed a few friends and Debra's teacher.  We had tons of fun making sugar cookies and decorating them.  Cami left a constipated cat cookie at her cousin Amy's apartment.  Cami put a brown Reese's Pieces on its bum.  Jared instead of door bell ditching he went up to Mike's old roommate (who didn't know him) and said, "I'm a secret agent and these are secret agent cookies."

So when we dropped of Amy's cookies the door was wide open with people sitting in front of the door so Cami just put them on the doorstep and ran.  Amy doesn't have my number so I texted her telling her we had left her a gift.  We had to do this because one of her roommates came bounding out of the door jumped over the plate of cookies and didn't even notice them.  She then danced on the porch of their apartment for ten seconds then ran back in without seeing a thing.  Wow.  We were afeared for the cookies, especially Cami's constipated cat cookie.