The Official "SU Rant" Contest

[I.J. Reilly]

nice.

It's my second entry. I went for the less is more concept with this one.

[Jarid in Cedar]

I think you meant regress in item 1. I corrected it for you.

Everytime catch your avatar as I am scrolling, it looks like he is giving the middle finger salute to the world.

[Rosebud]

No, yours was derivative. Me, I'd take the Pierre Menard approach to producing an SU text.

Your approach is correct of course... and your WORK will be remembered throughout CUF history... "Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.”

[SeattleUte]

Actually, by far your funniest posts are from SU the accidental comedian.



indubitably.

You have become very nasty at me lately. Was it my sometime alignment with Robin in the porn thread?

[Babs]

You have become very nasty at me lately. Was it my sometime alignment with Robin in the porn thread?

I'm nasty to everyone anymore. Five weeks'll do that to a girl.

[wuapinmon]

Your approach is correct of course... and your WORK will be remembered throughout CUF history... "Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.”

I take it you read, and didn't just skim, because then you'd know that "There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless."

(that translation is awkward.....my translation would be: "There is no intellectual exercise that isn't ultimately useless."

[wuapinmon]

Pierre Menard

Having studied SU's posts, I think that I've been able to reproduce, faithfully, a verbatim SU post that really sums up his words. Though, please keep in mind, that authorial intent should be negated by a hermeneutic reading of my words. You'll notice that my style suffers from a certain affectation, not so the object of my endeavor who handles with ease the style he calls his own. While he means what he says, I am infusing this post with irony.

I have (perhaps without wanting to) enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution. This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier. This technique fills the most placid works with adventure. To attribute the Imitatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Céline or to James Joyce, is this not a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual indications? To attribute the Book of Mormon to Nephi or Alma instead of Joseph Smith is the epitome of a tenuous spiritual indication.

It would literally take a supernatural intervention to get any rational person to believe the Book of Mormon is a genuine ancient artifact or history of an acient people. Nothing about the circumstances of its origin, its content, or the archeological, linguistic, or genetic record bespeaks that it is a historical artifact. NOTHING. Of course, common sense should absolve anyone from feeling like they need to dig that deeply. We have Jews and Persians. The Arch of Titus in Rome, Josephus' Chronicle, and ruins in Judea and Jerusalem confirm there were Hebrews and the enemies arrayed against them described in the Bible; the Dead Sea Scrolls take us back to hundreds of years before Christ in terms of original inscriptions on parchment of virtually all the Old Testament. There is a case to be made that Troy has been discovered. The archeological record is full of evidence corroborating Herodotus.

Where are the Nephites, the Lamanites, their great cities, their elephants, lions, tigers, swords, and magic compasses?

If you have experienced a supernatural intervention concerning the Book of Mormon I have no quarrel with you. In that case, you have the gift; I do not. But for most of humanity, relying on the arm of flesh, there remains the task of figuring out what to make of the Book of Mormon. It was precisely the Old Testament's absurdities including God's bad behavior in those stories that prompted Classically educated Jews including the creators of Christianity to start using Greek methods of reading sacred text for its allegorical content to interpret the Old Testament. This is not an original solution to religion's absurdities, including within Mormonism. If you want to believe that Jonah really got swallowed by a whale; drink plenty of fluids, I can't help you.

[All-American]

Having studied SU's posts, I think that I've been able to reproduce, faithfully, a verbatim SU post that really sums up his words. Though, please keep in mind, that authorial intent should be negated by a hermeneutic reading of my words. You'll notice that my style suffers from a certain affectation, not so the object of my endeavor who handles with ease the style he calls his own. While he means what he says, I am infusing this post with irony.

I admit it, I actually had to go back and check to make sure it wasn't an earlier SU post. Well done.

[SeattleUte]

I admit it, I actually had to go back and check to make sure it wasn't an earlier SU post. Well done.

It starts out slow, but the second paragraph on are excptional.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Here goes my first entry.

The setup:

SU notices some discussion about BYU changing access to youtube last week.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1...313193,00.html
http://www.cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?t=6504

SU's response:

I see that BYU has decided to block access to youtube on campus. There is no doubt that this was a directive from Church HQ in Salt Lake City in response to that brilliant little cartoon video on "Mormon Jesus" that we discussed a few weeks ago. How fitting that BYU would toss on another layer of censorship at the same time that Ahmadinijad and the radical Muslum clerics are clamping down in a similar fashion in Iran. Both the LDS church and Islam are relics of the 12th century; brutal oppressors of women, democracy, and the ideals of modern enlightenment. I am deeply offended that BYU even uses the word "university" in its title. There is no academic freedom, they ban the teaching of evolution, women are not allowed to teach, and all of the students have to take eight semester of BOM indoctrination. Unlike a real university, BYU shows no dedication to the concept of truth. There is zero attempt to investigate facts and present controversial issues fairly and in an unbiased fashion. To be honest, I feel sorry for those poor kids who have to endure this on a daily basis. The banality of such an experience would be crushing. It makes my blood boil.

[Jarid in Cedar]

Here goes my first entry.

The setup:

SU notices some discussion about BYU changing access to youtube last week.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1...313193,00.html
http://www.cougaruteforum.com/showthread.php?t=6504

SU's response:

I see that BYU has decided to block access to youtube on campus. There is no doubt that this was a directive from Church HQ in Salt Lake City in response to that brilliant little cartoon video on "Mormon Jesus" that we discussed a few weeks ago. How fitting that BYU would toss on another layer of censorship at the same time that Ahmadinijad and the radical Muslum clerics are clamping down in a similar fashion in Iran. Both the LDS church and Islam are relics of the 12th century; brutal oppressors of women, democracy, and the ideals of modern enlightenment. I am deeply offended that BYU even uses the word "university" in its title. There is no academic freedom, they ban the teaching of evolution, women are not allowed to teach, and all of the students have to take eight semester of BOM indoctrination. Unlike a real university, BYU shows no dedication to the concept of truth. There is zero attempt to investigate facts and present controversial issues fairly and in an unbiased fashion. To be honest, I feel sorry for those poor kids who have to endure this on a daily basis. The banality of such an experience would be crushing. It makes my blood boil.

That is a good one.

[I.J. Reilly]

It looks like the contest is heating up. I like it (as I'm sure SU does, too).

[RobinFinderson]

My SU parody:

What the Latter Day Saints might realize, if the FARMS lackeys were half as bright as they present themselves, is that Harold Bloom admires Joseph Smith as a prized specimen rather than an admirable historical figure. Bloom focuses his critical eye on Smith finding the same kind of pleasure a scientist might feel when focusing a microscope on a newly discovered fungus. As Nietzsche once said:

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Bloom is, above all, a Shakespeare scholar, and to admire the work of Shakespeare, at the highest level, is to be an admirer of crackpots and lunatics. Joseph Smith tickles Bloom's fancy the same way that King Lear might. Both are tales of megalomaniacs whose thirst for power inspired the raising up of kingdoms, but whose personal failings blinded them to the internecine treachery that would eventually raze those same kingdoms. Both Lear and Smith would be felled by those closest to them.

And though I don't have the time to tie all of the threads together for your benefit, I can assure you that Bloom would agree, that Brigham Young is more of a plotting Richard III than a heroic Henry VI. Young's fleeing to Utah is exhibit A of his cowardice. I don't remember if it was Plutarch who said, or if it came to me in my study as I was reading Plutarch, 'no matter where you run, you can not escape yourself.' Young would run, but the imprint of his true self would be placed on everything he would touch. He would go on to set up Utah as his own private fiefdom, with Utah's women as his own private concubine. As a boil breaches like Melville's leviathan, the savagery on display at Mountain Meadows would be merely one more example of Brigham's true outlook bubbling to the surface of Utah's craggy landscape. And as Young was distracting the priesthood by teaching them to goose-step, he was undoubtedly picking the loveliest fruits from the orchards, and having the most exquisite sex with them in his private quarters, all while raising up a priesthood leadership that persists to this very day. Mormons' penchant for pyramid schemes has less to do with any moral failings than it has to do with the structural organization of the church's leadership. It is in your institutional DNA. Brigham Young was the Bernie Madoff of his time, paying himself with other men's women, and paying his closest underlings with other men's women. My friends, Amway and Polygamy are two sides of the same coin.

Today we see the very same system in place, but now, rather than rewarding the sycophants with sex, they are instead rewarded with social status. No landmark in all of Utah is more aptly named than Brigham's Lion House. He was, indeed, the king of beasts, the sexual locus foci of his pride, and the one to which little lion cubs, even to this day, look for tutelage in a uniquely Mormon style of leadership. To really understand Brigham one must be a student of Richard III.

But I digress. To Bloom, the study of Mormonism is something akin to throwing a grand ball for the patients in the asylum. Bloom's own analytical approach rejects the common isms on which lesser academics build their careers. In place of a structural ism, Bloom persuades with poetry, and the power of his best writing seems to parallel the grotesqueness of his subjects. Thus the draw of the asylum. Bloom would much rather cut a rug with a deformed lunatic than with the loveliest angel. As anyone who can read between the lines will attest, Bloom's dance with the disfigured provides him better stories to tell over cocktails in New Haven. I certainly understand the appeal of the asylum, and CUF is my favorite asylum of all, though Mike Water's own brand of insanity is almost a donkey show on its own.

[Rosebud]

Having studied SU's posts, I think that I've been able to reproduce, faithfully, a verbatim SU post that really sums up his words. Though, please keep in mind, that authorial intent should be negated by a hermeneutic reading of my words. You'll notice that my style suffers from a certain affectation, not so the object of my endeavor who handles with ease the style he calls his own. While he means what he says, I am infusing this post with irony.

Well done... not that you HAVE done anything considering that thinking, analyzing and inventing are the normal respiration of intelligence.

(Brilliant)

[Rosebud]

Mormons' penchant for pyramid schemes has less to do with any moral failings than it has to do with the structural organization of the church's leadership. It is in your institutional DNA. Brigham Young was the Bernie Madoff of his time, paying himself with other men's women, and paying his closest underlings with other men's women. My friends, Amway and Polygamy are two sides of the same coin.

LAUGHING HARD... THANKS!