Tag: bible

Categories
Essay Personal Update Random

The Most Expensive Bottle of Dr. Pepper I Will Ever Buy

A bottle of Dr. Pepper in my somewhat cluttered apartment
The culprit. (Photo credit: Me)

I’m not sure whether I’ll enter into the kingdom of heaven, but my JBL TUNE 760NC headphones certainly will.

Here’s what happened. Two days ago I was walking home from my new office on NAU campus. The office itself is worthy of another story sometime; it’s the kind of office that elicits the response “You’re in Peterson? That’s a rite of passage” from the older faculty members, located in a building that was reportedly supposed to have been torn down back in 2016.

What’s important to this story is that it’s a mile from where I live, which is short enough that walking is the best way to get there but long enough that it’s pretty miserable if the weather is bad. The rain started just after I left my office. Now, in Utah where I’m from, it’s not worth owning an umbrella, because it rains maybe twice a month, and when it does it’s over in twenty minutes. I thought I would be fine to push through the rain like the grown taxpaying adult that I am.

Never in my life had I experienced rain so thick that it felt like that scene in Lord of the Rings where the Fellowship are walking over Caradhras through the blizzard with their arms over their faces and Saruman says “If the mountain defeats you, will you risk a more dangerous road?” I couldn’t have been more drenched if the whole population of Flagstaff had taken turns emptying five-gallon buckets over my head. And every car that shot by flung dirty water onto the sidewalk, so that by the time I reached home, I was covered in water and mud and looked like I’d just cosplayed a car in a car wash.

(Incidentally, the shoes I was wearing that day—this was the third time I’d worn them—are still wet.)

So that was baptism by water for my headphones—which miraculously survived the whole ordeal well enough to repeatedly play the new Bleachers live recording while I furnished my office yesterday. They made it home dry and intact after work and I put them on the counter just in time for them to receive their second baptism in as many days: baptism by Dr. Pepper.

I was trying to be responsible, honest. After work I wandered around for a little while, trying to decide whether I wanted fast food, before realizing that what I really craved was a vanilla ice cream float with Dr. Pepper, and it would be cheaper to buy the ingredients for that than buying dessert at Dairy Queen. So I walked the fifteen minutes to Target and brought home a tub of ice cream and a two-liter Dr. Pepper. As soon as I got home, I set my headphones on the table, got out a cup for my long-awaited dessert, dished out the ice cream, and opened the Dr. Pepper…

…and a geyser comprising an entire liter of Dr. Pepper, fully half of the bottle, pumped through my hands with immeasurable newtons of force. It couldn’t have gone any higher if I’d dumped a whole bag of Mentos into that bottle. I yelled a couple of curse words and knocked over the ice cream cup—the ill-fated ice cream float got assembled, at least, on the kitchen counter—and, clothing soaked for the second night in a row, I rushed for a towel to absorb the lake of Dr. Pepper off the counter and the floor and the dishwasher and the walls and the ceiling (where brown Dr. Pepper droplets hung like stalactites).

For the next half hour, my roommates (who had been playing Super Smash Bros in the living room when all hell broke loose; Dr. Pepper made its way all the way onto their couches, fortunately upholstered in leather) and I conducted damage control on the brand new kitchen. I should mention that we’re the first ones to live here. Less than a month into our contract and the living room walls are permanently streaked with the evidence of my cola-flavored folly. It came off the baseboards and the doors just fine, and the floors are mostly sticky-free after a couple moppings, but I doubt the constellations of Dr. Pepper on the ceiling will go away without another painting.

I really tried my best to keep this apartment nice, but in the end—no matter how hard you may wish it otherwise—no treasure on earth, even a new apartment, is safe from the moth and rust and Dr. Pepper that doth corrupt, in the words of St. Matthew.

I’ve been reading the fourteenth-century samurai epic Heike Monogatari, which is all about the transience of glory and beauty: “Pleasure and riches are vanity…youth cannot save me, for many die young, and breathing out never assures that the breath will pass in again. Summer heat shimmer, a flash of lightning; life vanishes still more swiftly.” That hauntingly beautiful awareness of doom is moving to read about in classic literature, but I could have used without the reminder of the transience of my wordly possessions via the twin vehicles of H2O and Dr. Pepper.

Granted, my poor headphones made it through their ordeal well enough to deliver me the new Airborne Toxic Event single, so I’ll take what I can get. (It’s very Smiths-wave, for the record.) ∎

Categories
Personal Update

“So I Get to Be the First Pancake?!” (Winter 2023 Quotes)

Drawing in Microsoft Paint
A work of fine art by Michael Memmott. Left: “The traditional framework for understanding compliance is stylized, hierarchical, and static. It assumes that states accept international agreements only when their governments regard them to be in their interest. Because of this, states generally comply with their obligations. If they do not, dispute resolution is available and sanctions will be used to deter violations and to punish offenders.”

It’s that time of the semester again: all the weirdest, wisest, and most unhinged quotes I’ve heard during the last four months of school, all in one place. We’ve got a liberal—nay, promiscuous—helping this time. So buckle your seat belts and remember, in the words of a random stranger I overheard: “Love is stronger than communicable disease. Trust me on this.”

The Band

The closest you get to a one night stand at BYU is ‘hey do you want to do the bowling deal with me?’ —Brandon

Emily (about Portal): I really love the little turrets. They’re so cute.
Brandon: Probably 70% of my social skills come from those turrets. Conservative.

I have as much reading comprehension as a poodle right now. Possibly less. —Emily

That’s actually a swear word in my conlang. —Em
My conlang is exclusively swear words. —Em, upon having this quote reread to her

I have a devil on both shoulders. —Em

As I read that sentence, my eyes narrowed promiscuously. —Camryn

People think it’s weird when I give them earlobe massages. —Michael

Every time I go to Tucano’s I feel so sick afterwards and it takes me like two business days to recover —Em

Actually they were infertile because they were vaporized. —Brandon, on the dinosaurs

Michael: Captain Crunch is like eating tacks.
Camryn: Tacks that love you.

Brandon: I wonder if there’s a place for LDS midwest emo.
Em: In French?
Brandon: It’s very niche.

That’s not a hearse, that’s Kate! —Michael

Who wants to bet that I’ll eat a screw by the end of the night? —Michael

Hot cameraman: lost to time —Camryn, watching The Ring

They’re already having a funeral, so it seems rather economical to have him die at the funeral. —Camryn

They really could have used more oboe when someone died. —Michael

You have free will. You can do whatever you want. You are like a sovereign state on the international stage. Laws are enforced, but not really. —Em, taking polysci

Okay when I say emo I just mean interesting. —Brandon

Camryn: Don’t die, Eric.
Me: Why would I do that?
Camryn: I can think of many reasons.

You should play hard to get with Colonel Sanders Eric, I think you’re worth it. —Camryn

NCMO skills, guys. I can play the mandolin with my tongue. —Brandon

I’d love to have that experience, but I would love to have someone else have that experience and transfer all the skills to me. In summary, I would not like to have that experience. —Em

BYU Faculty

There’s a line from the Bible about final exams: ‘Tis better to give than to receive.’ —Dr. Harper

This is almost as important as ‘don’t put the entire folder in the trash.’ —Dr. Eckstein

[…if I’m just standing here in the classroom], and I see Pope John Paul II. Wouldn’t that be surprising, especially because he’s dead. —Dr. Green

It’s okay to feel let down by the theory. —Dr. Green

People do say crap when they’re looking at this, but it’s an acronym. It means Commonly Recorded Artefactual Potentials. —Dr. Green

Your textbook talks about ‘Government.’ We’re going to ignore it. —Dr. Green

Anyone can kick the bucket. And most people do at some point. —Dr. Green

If you’re interested I can send you my friggin’ long dissertation. —Anonymous

Composition is the humanities equivalent of football. —Dr. Eckstein

That’s the reason I went into the humanities. I topped out at trigonometry. But it turns out that numbers are letters that are shaped differently. —Dr. Eckstein

So I get to be the first pancake?! —Dr. Johnson’s research assistant

We’re geeking out about vowels here, and you’re like, hey look, look at her consonants! —Dr. Stanley

There are people who are raised speaking Esperanto as an L1–their parents meet at Esperanto conventions, and they speak Esperanto at home. This happens with Klingon as well from time to time, but… —Dr. Whiting

People I Don’t Know

I saw a hot girl in my class, so I kinda went and sat down next to her. And I was like, ‘Your outfit makes you look like a Pokemon trainer.’ And she [thought for a second, and she] was like, ‘Do you have a type?’ And I was like, ‘Grass.’ She wasn’t talking about Pokemon. —Speaker in church

It was funny, I didn’t realize it was a date until like days afterwards. —Overheard

It’s very different when you see them in a casket and they have all their skin on. —Overheard, about anatomy class ∎

Categories
Personal Update

OUT NOW: “When I Laid the Foundations”

Printed book covers

It’s been a little while! The culprit is another writing project, and I’m excited to finally announce it.

I wrote a short story! Entitled When I Laid the Foundations, it’s a sci-fi/fantasy story with some elements of time travel and theology that runs about 6,500 words (roughly a 15-minute read). 

Immortality is a curse that Lucca has been forced to bear for millennia too long. The more she wanders between the threads of time, bending past and future, the more lost she becomes. 

Worshipped by some, hated by others, she is little more than a bitter, hollow shadow of the questions that cycles of history have failed to answer. But when she agrees to meet someone from her distant past over drinks at a coffee shop, Lucca must finally confront her immortality and the Old Testament God’s enigmatic response to Job’s innocent suffering: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

Read it online now, or request a physical copy.

Thoughts from the Author

Before reading any further, please read the story! The commentary below contains spoilers.

Writing the “About the Author” section for the back cover of the print books was surreal. I’m not an author! Well, I am in the sense that I wrote something, and it technically has my name on it, but “About the Author” sections are for people who write real books and talk about their potted plants and their meaningful cultural experiences and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. But here we are. In elementary school, I always said I wanted to be an author when I grew up, and although life has taken me down a slightly different path, it still feels gratifying to have completed a work of fiction that I can share.

It seems to be a universal principle of writing—or maybe it’s just my writing—that anything I write seems awkward and cringey in retrospect. Perhaps that’s an indicator of progress. Either way, it’s unavoidable, so I just keep writing and hope that people will be able to enjoy and relate to it. I’m learning to worry less about letting negative reactions prevent me from trying new things. The very best movies have bad reviews. Even the Wikipedia article for Andrea Bocelli says that “his voice and performances have routinely been the subject of negative reviews by critics”—and if the work of an immensely popular singer like him can be described as “a profoundly unmusical contribution”, then I have no chance at pleasing everyone. But if just a few readers find my work worth reading, then I’m happy I wrote it.

As I mention in my acknowledgments, this story has some history behind it. Originally, I wanted to write a time travel novel told in chronological order. (Don’t think about that too hard. The more sense you try to make of it, the less sense it makes.) That was back in 2018. There was a large ensemble cast of characters with interweaving stories, flashbacks to alternate timelines—the whole thing was rather unintelligible, especially as a first effort.

However, a few characters and scenes worked well, particularly Lucca, the central character of that outline. The name and hair color were inspired by Chrono Trigger, the Super Nintendo classic—a delightful piece of video game storytelling—but the similarity to that Lucca ends there. My original outline had planned a great deal of philosophical navel-gazing about free will, culture, life’s meaning, etc., and the anchor for that was a completely nihilistic, “anti-god” who had lost all sense of meaning because she was subject to neither death nor time; she became too powerful to face any kind of material resistance, and the world became a plaything to her. The pivotal final scene played out the same way as it does here. It was the strongest of the scenes I ended up writing, and I shared it with friends and family, but it didn’t come together without the rest of the unwritten story.

Meanwhile, the content related to the Book of Job was added much later in 2020, when I was reading the Old Testament seriously for the first time. Job quickly became my favorite book because of its fascinating tension—no two commentators seemed to agree on what it meant or how to interpret it, and the winding interior of the book stood almost completely at odds with the simplicity of the frame story. I was especially interested in God’s response to Job—opening with “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”—which seemed like either a deflection of the question or a complete non-sequitur. I began to make sense of it when I turned the situation on its head. What if Job were in God’s place, or God were in Job’s place? God’s tour of the cosmos became intimately related to Job’s suffering, and this story’s coffee shop conversation was born.

Eventually, I decided to try submitting some of my writing to a college writing journal, and this is the story that was in the best shape at the time. I tore the ending and the coffee shop scenes from the early draft, wrote a single chapter of backstory for each character, glued it all together, and put it through a couple rounds of editing. As soon as it was finished, I decided that I’d rather retain the publication rights and distribute it to my friends and family and on my blog, so I had some art done and made some physical copies (I’ll be making more once I get a printer). The manuscript I submitted is still lying in a slush pile somewhere.

And that’s the story of How I Laid the Foundations! My hope is that the story in its current form is an engaging narrative that points to questions and answers about human significance, compassion, death, meaning in chaos, and letting go. I hope you enjoyed it.

Future Plans

My current writing project is a lovely research paper for my historical linguistics class with the working title, “Broderfolk eller brödrafolk: Are Danish and Swedish still mutually intelligible?” or the more sterile “Asymmetric mutual intelligibility between Danish and Swedish”. It sounds absolutely thrilling, I’m sure, but I’m enjoying learning more about Scandinavian linguistics in the process. If you happen to be curious about that particular niche, you know where to find me.

Otherwise, I’m writing some early scenes for another fiction story. The surface genre is YA dystopian romance, and the ideas I’m hoping to dig into are modern anti-natalism, coming of age, and a relationship between two young people without a common language. Stay tuned!

As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful holiday and Christmas season!

Yours, Eric. ∎