Long Post Alert

Every now and again, some movie, book, song, or television show will come out dealing with what are known as the “Seven Deadly Sins”. As Mormons we don’t know much about this topic because…well…it’s just not scriptural. It’s more of a Catholic tradition than actual doctrine and it has origins dating back to 4th century monks. Don’t get me wrong greed, sloth, pride, envy, etc. are all deadly sins, there is no doubt about that, but so are lying, cheating, bearing false witness, swearing, watching bad movies, and thinking the Asian girl from Grey’s Anatomy is good looking. There are also spin-offs of the Seven Deadly Sins too like “the seven heavenly virtues”, the “seven deadly sins of business”, “The Seven Deadly Heresies”, and the seven worst movies derived from video games. Okay I made that last one up but seriously how hilariously sucky were Mario Bros. the movie (John Leguizamo didn’t even have a stache…nice Luigi!), Street Fighter the movie, Double dragon (okay I loved this movie as kid almost as much as 3 Ninjas), and Laura Croft Tomb Raider (although we all know this movie does have at least one redeeming quality.)

For my own spin-off I want to share with you all what I like to call the seven random things that have been on my mind lately:

(To start, here are just two.)
1) A few of years ago I went with a couple of brother-in-laws to Tucson to watch BYU football play the University of Arizona. As we drove through downtown, I started to notice the amount of bars and clubs lining the street. From the outside it was obvious that the majority of the patrons were college students. It occurred to me that college campuses tend to attract a certain amount of industry to the cities they are in. As students tend to be a large target market for these cities, bars and clubs are apt to accumulate nearby. Provo has this same dynamic. Only rather than attracting bars and clubs we attract call-centers and movie theaters. Mathematically it should not make sense. At my last count there were 30,000 students living in Provo and 31,000 call centers (we are tied for first with Bangalor and Mumbai). I believe there are also 343 movie theaters within a 16 block radius of Center Street and University Ave (all of which have played non-stop showings of “New Moon” to completely sold out crowds since early Friday Morning.) Am I taking crazy pills or has somebody else noticed this?

2) An article caught my attention the other day called “The Evolution of Cell Phones”. It talked about the old phones that came in a backpack with a squiggly pig tail cord, the Zack Morris, The classic Nokia that had the best cell phone game known to man (Snake), all the way up to the I-phone. If I had written that article it would have contained a heck of a lot more than just the technological advances that have taken place with cell phones. It would talk about the irony that with each new advance in cellular technology, our ability to communicate with one another has severely diminished. When we were kids and we wanted to get a hold of our friends we had to call their house. Not only that, we had the gate keeper system known as Mom and Dad. So we learned to talk to our friends parents. At least as far as to say “is Morgan home? Do you know where he went? Who was he with? Do you know where they were going?” (that last part is much funnier if it is read in a high-pitched pre-pubescent tone). Now-a-days teenagers can’t even figure out how to talk to each other much less their friends parents. I see kids hanging out with their girlfriends and not say a single word to them all night long, and then the second they get in the car after the date they start texting each other until their fingers fall off.