Incongruities

It was Stephanie Mabey’s Zombie Song that started me worrying.

There is a line in the song that says “Our love is stronger than Edward and Bella’s.” It does not say “Our love is stronger than Romeo and Juliet’s.” That caused me to fret that for this generation a trendy vampire saga is replacing Shakespeare’s classic story of overpowering romantic love that has endured for hundreds of years.

Please, let it not be so.

I first read Romeo and Juliet in seventh grade and I wasn’t impressed. Testosterone hadn’t really kicked in at that point and girls were more curiosities than magnetic forces. It was my first foray into Shakespeare and between the boring subject matter and the challenging verbiage, I could not connect with the characters or the storyline.

A movie version which I was not allowed to see came out at the same time. It was before the ratings system, but the film was recommended for “mature” audiences—a word that certainly does not apply to junior high boys. One of my classmates saw the film and while he did not understand or enjoy the movie, he jabbered for days about Juliet’s breasts exposed in one brief scene. This confirms my point about adolescent boys and “mature.”

I was a senior in high school the next time I read Romeo and Juliet. By then I had read other works of Shakespeare and learned to understand and appreciate his irony and clever use of words. I had also experienced personal rejection by young women several times and endured the disapproving glares of fathers. I felt like I could empathize with Romeo’s rejection and frustration.

I can’t relate at all to Edward and Bella.

Twilight replaces romance and tortured love with stalking. Terse comments supplant clever conversation. Where intense passion is the driving force behind Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella’s main character traits seem to be broodiness and sullenness.

Romeo and Juliet had a love that is everlasting, as evidenced by the fact that hundreds of years after the creation of their characters, their very names symbolize unbreakable yet tragic love.

Vampires refer to themselves as everlasting, yet one can kill them by driving a stake through their hearts, by cutting off their heads, by tearing them apart or by burning. They justifiably worry constantly about death because some vampire or another always seems to be getting killed in spite of their alleged immortality.

Romeo and Juliet’s fathers were strongly opposed to their union and tried to prevent it.

Although he is a local constable, Bella’s father doesn’t have a clue that monsters populate his town, even though the unexplained death toll is staggering for a small community. He grudgingly accepts the idea that his daughter is involved with a pasty-skinned young man who seems much too old to be in high school, whose family contains several siblings of similar description who all appear to be romantically connected.

When Juliet needed help and consolation, she enlisted the help of a clergyman. He came up with a plan to help the two lovers find happiness together. Unfortunately the carefully crafted scheme goes awry and several people end up dead.

When Bella needs support and comfort she is consoled by werewolf Jacob, who probably makes a living as a bodybuilder or male underwear model. Jacob’s plan to help Bella is to have her dump the other guy. Lots of people also get killed.

Both stories have tragedy in common. The last line of the Shakespeare tale reads: “For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Edward and Bella’s story is tragic because it could mislead a generation into thinking that Shakespeare’s classic is no longer the ultimate tale of star-crossed love.

Tuesday night I attended the Republican Presidential Debate in Las Vegas. Afterward I got to do an exclusive interview with the candidate. I’ve included links to the stories that I wrote. Many people have since asked me what he was like. In all honesty, it is difficult to judge a person’s character in 15 minutes.

What I can say it that is it extremely unusual for a presidential candidate to grant the type of access I was given. I talked to many people who know Mr. Cain quite well while I was there. They all spoke glowingly about his knowledge, his humility, his honesty and his faith.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=17740115&nid=757&title=herman-cain-discusses-faith-and-the-lds-issue

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705392832/Herman-Cain-tells-Deseret-News-the-numbers-show-US-economy-needs-help.html

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=17742390&nid=1070&title=backstage-access-at-the-gop-las-vegas-debate

My wife and I recently spent some time in Wyoming visiting my oldest son’s family. He lives in Cody, just east of Yellowstone. It is a beautiful area and we enjoy every trip and wish we could make it more frequently.

Among our activities this trip we watched two separate bands of wild horses. Both groups had a couple of this year’s colts and it was obvious that the focus of each band was to help and protect those young animals.

We were there for the blessing of my newest granddaughter. My oldest daughter was also there with her family. At the same time, my youngest daughter was at our home in Highland with her daughter generously watching our home and playing zookeeper for my menagerie.

My youngest son could not attend because he is still serving as a missionary in the Dominican Republic. We look forward eagerly to his return in November.

I mention all this not to bore everyone, but just to make the point that Anette and I have been blessed to have four wonderful children and six beautiful grandchildren. Our three married children each found fantastic spouses and we love and appreciate them.

For all of us, family is an important focal point of our lives.

I recently finished writing a book called Mormon Parenting Secrets: Time-Tested Methods for Raising Exceptional Children. It is currently being typeset and I hope to have it in print in a month or so.

For the time being, I’m going to be focusing a lot of effort on the production and sale of my book, so if I am not updating this blog regularly, that is the reason. The web site is not ready yet, but you’ll soon be able to learn more about the book at www.mormonparentingsecrets.com.

I intended to update this blog a couple weeks ago with a discussion of some of my pet peeves. Then the actual notion of peeves distracted me. What actually constitutes a peeve?

Peeves are things that annoy, vex or irritate. But I’m not certain about the difference between a regular peeve and a pet peeve. And if pet peeves exist, are there also feral peeves?

If regular peeves are irritating and annoying, do feral peeves step it up a couple notches to terrifying and potentially dangerous?

Is there a list somewhere that categorizes peeves into levels of irritation or vexation? If not, there should be. I hope you can see how this topic can be incredibly distracting. After a many days of research and pondering, I don’t have any concrete answers.

Perhaps peeves could be numbered according to their severity—kind of like tornadoes. An innocuous, mild “pet” peeve could be a P1. A horrific peeve that could potentially cause one to have a brain aneurism could be a P5.

Back to my list of personal peeves, drivers who pull to the end of a merge lane and stop annoy me immensely. The very term “merge” implies motion. One cannot merge into traffic if one is stopped. Because this peeve has the potential to be dangerous to other drivers, I would label it as a feral peeve and categorize it as an F4.

I won’t mention any of my other peeves right now. I’m still trying to figure out where they all fit on the Stephens’ Scale of Peeves.

Apparently the Tooele city attorney charged a man with a crime for eating a rat. It was a baby rat—eyes still closed, pink and hairless.

It was shocking news, because I realized that I have possibly committed numerous heinous crimes as well. Just this week I ate pigs, cows, chickens (mature and embryonic) and fishes.

It must have been the manner in which the man consumed his meal that authorities found offensive. He recorded himself as he swallowed the rat whole and then posted the scene on the Internet. That netted him an animal cruelty charge.

I never film myself eating animals and I pay a professional animal assassin to kill them for me first. Once they are dead, I sear their flesh on an open fire or a toss it in a hot pan. Instead of chomping them whole, I hack them into small chunks with a knife. Then I devour them bit by bit.

So far I’ve never been caught or prosecuted. Then again, I never realized what I was doing was a crime. Obviously eating a rat shows questionable judgment, but it is hard to imagine that it is criminally dumb.

My oldest son once ate a mouse’s tail on a dare by co-workers who offered him $50 for the feat. I told him he was stupid for doing that. I’m sure he could have easily bid them up to at least $100.

I served a mission in Iceland and the people there eat sheep heads and rotten shark infused with urine. I’m not kidding and there are many Internet videos of people eating both. That should be illegal.

The accused man faces a Class A misdemeanor and could be fined or even jailed if convicted.

Of course if he is convicted, it makes things easier for the Tooele police. Instead of chasing burglars and drug dealers, they can stake out the meat section of the local supermarkets.

A few weeks ago we made a trip to Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge. It’s way out in the West Desert. It is an amazing place to view waterfowl, like these two pelicans that just landed on the water.

Note: I’ve been lax at updating my blog, primarily because I’ve been doing lots of other writing. I’m just about finished with a book on parenting and I’ve been doing some newspaper and magazine work.

I also take lots of pictures this time of year, so I think I’ll start adding some of my favorite shots from time to time. –Flint

My new hero is Dale Price. I’ve never met Dale. I learned about him through media reports about his unusual behavior over the past year.

Dale has a son, Rain, who just completed his sophomore year at American Fork High School. Every morning of the school year, Dale waved at his son on the school bus as it drove past their house.

Rain did not want his father to do this. In fact before the school year started he begged his dad not to wave at the bus. As everyone in junior high school and high school knows, dads are embarrassing, uncool, and generally spend their time on the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder.

Most dads will do almost anything to keep their children happy. But instead of acquiescing to his son’s request, Dale instead viewed it as a challenge. So each day of the school year he not only waved at the bus, but he did so wearing a variety of costumes. They covered the spectrum from a mermaid, to a pirate, from an athlete to a leprechaun.

I remember a time when one of my adolescent children was going to the mall with some friends. Upon learning that his mother and I would also be at the mall doing some shopping, I saw a look of horror on his face.

“If you see me there, pretend you don’t know me,” he said.

I wanted to dress in dirty overalls and irrigation boots and make certain that we encountered his party at the mall. But I didn’t and he was saved from humiliation.

It is a sad day in a dad’s life when he crosses over from being hero and a best friend to being Quasimodo.

I admire Dale Price for not choosing the path of least resistance. Rain survived the embarrassment. No permanent physical or mental harm occurred and based on information posted at the family’s web site, http://waveatthebus.blogspot.com/, he has thrived in spite of (and probably because of) his dad’s fatherly dedication.