Bob Bobberson wrote:From the Annals of the Turley J. Hinton Institute...."One shall be more intelligent than the other..."
Bob Bobberson!!?
I finally got it. It means Bob! Bob OR Bob's son! The guy writing these stories' name is BOB (or his son is named Bob). All we need now is a list of all church members named Bob and see if they have a son named Bob. Easy.
This is a common Mormon ploy. Joseph Smith used it frequently. Shiloh=Shilom, Kishkiminetas=Kishkumen, Morin=Moron
or just Adam-Ondi-Ahman=Adam On The Amen
Quick! Someone get me a list of all the Mormon's named Bob.
And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love...you make. PMcC
Part II: "One shall be more intelligent than the other..."
Later that afternoon, Frank Carmichael sat at his computer, refreshing his email INBOX every five minutes, waiting to see if "Korihor" would respond to him. For lunch he'd driven over to India Palace, but his meal wasn't sitting well for him, and he rummaged around in his desk for his Zantac. He used bottle of caffeine-free Diet Coke to wash down the pill. He clicked the refresh button again, and sure enough, there it was: a new message from "Korihor Smith."
RE: RE: TIME FOR YOU TO BE EXPOSED YOU MOPOLOGIST HACK
Who said anything about a conflict? What I care about is the truth and that's something you obviously have no regard for. The truth is going to come out one way or the other though doctor carbuncel.
He sat for several moment with his fingers suspended over the keyboard, and then he quickly typed out his response:
What do you want?
Before sending it, he added one more line:
What is it you think I did that needs 'exposing'?
Then he clicked SEND and stared at the screen. Out his office window, on the third floor of the Hinton Institute building, he had a spectacular view of Mt. Timpanogos. A reef of clouds was lit up just beyond its summit. When he turned back to his monitor, a new message had arrived:
Please. Don't play stupid. You know what a liar and a hack you are professor. Lets just say that the word plagiarism should ring a bell. We can get Dr Fitzhugh on the horn if we need to. He'll go on the record I'm sure."
Franklynn read over the message two, three, and four times. He was shaking slightly, his heart hammering away in his chest. So this person (or persons) really did know. The day had finally come, as, on some level, he had always known it would.
At the time, it had seen like such a simple thing. He was hard at work on his dissertation, which had dealt with vestigial astrological figurations in the transition from Greek/Demotic to Coptic. It was something that Howell Lambeth had encouraged him to do before he left BYU to pursue his graduate work at Princeton. "Your work in this area could be a major help to us in our Book of Abraham work," Howell said. "When you're nearing completion of your Ph.D., let us know. There'll be a job waiting for you here at the Institute."
But his dissertation director, Marcus Fitzhugh, kept finding problems in his analyses: "I really feel like you're stretching the evidence in the third chapter," he would say. "The claims here are pretty thin." Frank was torn: on the one hand, he didn't feel the claims were as shaky as Fitzhugh said. Sure, there was some speculation going on, but it was certainly grounded in the evidence. On the other hand, he also knew that he was doing the sort of apologetic work that would one day net him a job at BYU, and what mattered more? Doing the Lord's work, or succumbing to the ways of the world? Franklynn was confident that one day Fitzhugh and his ilk would all be proven wrong, and that they would have to kneel before the Lord to account for what they had done, and for the ways that they had interfered with the building of the kingdom.
Still, every time Frank re-submitted his work for approval, and every time he tried to argue his case, Fitzhugh shut him down. "This just isn't rising to the level of rigorousness that I require," he said. "But I have serious reservations about changing that section," he replied. "Well, I can't sign off on your work until you do, I'm afraid."
Meanwhile, Howell and the other people at the Hinton Institute were getting impatient: "I thought your dissertation was ready to go?" Merlyn Young said. "We really need you out here as soon as possible. The wolves are at the gate," Herb McConkie said. And the worst was from Howell: "I really don't know if I can hold a spot for you much longer, Frank. If you don't have your degree requirements hammered out some time in the next 9 months or so, I'm going to have to give your spot to someone else."
Franklynn had seen his future crumbling before his eyes. Howell had sent him photos of the gorgeous office view he'd have on the third floor of the Institute building. He'd spoken of unlimited travel budgets, and research funds, and closed-door meetings with the Brethren. Now all of this was in jeopardy, so Frank did what he thought he needed to do: he filed a grievance against Prof. Marcus Fitzhugh, alleging religious discrimination. Of course, this wasn't strictly true, but it was certainly the case that Fitzhugh had leveled his criticisms exclusively at those portions of Frank's work that would bolster LDS claims about the Book of Abraham. Both Fitzhugh and Frank were called into the department chair's office to explain themselves. Ultimately, the chair, a rumpled, grey-haired man in his sixties, said, "I can't see any definitive evidence of discrimination here. Nonetheless, it's clear that this mentoring relationship has been permanently damaged, so my advice is that you seek out a new dissertation director, Mr. Carmichael."
By the end of the week, Frank had talked Bruce Winterbotham into serving as chair, and they scheduled his dissertation defense for the next month. This meant he had to scramble to complete the final two chapters, along with revising some of the bits that Fitzhugh had complained about. He was able to salvage a good deal of the apologetic material, but on the other hand, he felt that he could submerge it a bit more thoroughly so that it was less noticeable as apologetics. But as the date of the defense approached, he still needed forty or so pages of original text. The long nights of staying up late, pounding away at the keys, checking and double-checking his sources had gotten to him, and in a state of exhausted desperation, he'd simply transcribed a number of passages out of an old, obscure, nineteenth century book on Coptic that had been written by a Frenchman that no one remembered anymore. Besides, Frank reasoned: this was an interior chapter that had very little to do with his main argument. Nobody would ever check up on this. Or that's what he thought, anyhow. As soon as he finished his defense, he caught a flight back to Salt Lake, and drove down to Provo where his wife had been apartment-hunting. That night, Howell and Merlyn and their wives took them out to dinner, and afterwards, Howell drove them all out to the Institute, where he led them upstairs to Frank's new office. He unlocked the door and they went in and looked out the window, at the velvet black of the night and all the myriad stars winking dimly above the campus lights. Frank had settled into a comfortable academic life, and everything had gone more or less smooth.
Until now, that is. He typed out another response:
Okay. What do you want?
Almost immediately the reply came back, inquiring about his office phone number.
Yes, that's correct. Why?
And then the phone rang. He picked it up: "Hello?"
The person on the other end of the line drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. "Professor Carbuncle. Professor Carbuncle. How nice to hear your voice."
"Who is this?"
"You know who it is."
"Why are you doing this?"
"I already told you why. Because I believe in the truth. Don't you believe in the truth?"
"Of course I do."
"Good. That's good. I'm glad to hear that."
"What do you want?"
"What, you mean right now? Or down the road? Or in general?"
"Yes."
"What I want," the voice went on, "is to meet you in person."
"I can't do that."
"What do you mean you can't do that? What choice do you have, professor? You want us to splash this information all across the internet? What would happen to you if we did? How would you explain yourself to all those smart people at the Hinton Institute? What would the people in your ward think? What would the people back at Princeton think? Huh? You got an answer for that."
"All right. When do you want to meet?"
There was another long inhalation, with the person breathing out heavily into the receiver. "Do you like roller coasters, Franklynn? I sure do. Let's meet up a week from Saturday. At Lagoon. You've been to Lagoon, right?"
"Yeah, but..."
"But what?"
"It's just... Nothing, nothing. I'll make up some excuse to my wife, I guess, though I don't feel comfortable lying to her like this..."
The voice interrupted: "Oh yes you do! You've been lying all this time, professor. Lying for the Lord! You have no problem lying at all. You do it like a fish breathes in water." A pause. "So you do whatever you need to do. I'll be waiting for you at Lagoon. Show or don't. I think you know what's going to happen if you back out. You have a pleasant afternoon."
Click.
Franklynn swallowed hard and set the receiver back. Implacable hatred, he thought, and again he turned back to his window, blinking in an effort to fight back the tears of frustration.
To be continued in Part III: Schwartzkopf Double Looping
Can anyone doubt that this sort of "lying for the Lord" is not uncommon in the apologetic community, and that others look the other way? (see: Sorenson's footnotes)
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
Howell Lambeth slapped the desk and his body shook with mirth. He let out a final set of "haw haws" and used his thumb and forefinger to squeeze the tears of laughter away from his eyes. "Good golly," he said. "Those anti-Mormons. I just can't get over how stupid they are." On the right side of the room sat Merlyn Young, also chuckling, with his fingers laced together across his thick midsection. Franklynn, meanwhile, sat on the small sofa at the left side of the room, trying rather weakly to smile, and to be a good sport. After spending a good hour and a half fretting, and wondering if he should call the police, he had walked down to Howell's office and told him everything, including the bits about his plagiarism ("Honestly, Howell: I didn't know what to do. I'd plumb run out of time.") Howell and Merlyn had both shrugged. "Certainly not the first time such a thing was necessary," Merlyn said. And then Howell had asked to see the emails that Mr. "Korihor" had sent to Franklynn, and the merriment had begun.
"Is there a rubber stamp somewhere that says 'Mopologetic Hack' on it?" Merlyn asked.
"I'm trying to figure out where this idiot learned to spell. Yet another case of our public schools failing us once again. Privitization is the answer, friends. I don't need to tell you that," Howell said.
Frank sat there listening to all of this, nodding and smiling at their jokes. They were funny, it was true: masters of witty repartee, he thought. But he always felt slightly apart from them, as if he was the odd one out. Eventually, as their laughter died down, he held up his hand, and said, meekly, "What happens if the antis post this stuff on the message boards?"
"Nothing happens," said Howell. "We ignore it. The end."
Franklynn stared down at the ground. "They'll have a field day with it."
"No, they won't," said Howell.
"It's pretty simply when you think about it," Merlyn added. "These are anonymous nobodies posting malicious gossip on the internet. You're a Princeton-educated Latter-day Saint. Think about that for a moment. Those people who might call your bona fides into question are completely without credibility. You're in the clear no matter what."
"A part of me feels guilty about this," Franklynn said.
"Ppphhhbbbt. Enough of that." Howell had gathered up the email printouts and he was tapping them on the desk. "That crap is between you and you alone. You've been doing the Lord's work all along, so there's no need to get bent out of shape. You know as well as any of us that our particular calling is special and particular. The rules don't work the same way for every last person. You know that."
Yeah," said Frank. "I guess that I do."
And with that, they all stood up and shook hands. Howell slapped Frank on the back, and they all bid one another farewell, and went about the rest of their day.
At home that evening, Frank gobbled down the chili and Fritos dish that Peyson had prepared, and then, while she took care of the dishes, he read Denise and Clarice a bedtime story before heading back out. He was still feeling edgy and stressed-out, and he went back into the kitchen and sat at the table with a glass of milk. He watched Peyson's swaying hips as she rinsed plates in the sink. He stood up and went behind her and looped his arms around her waist.
"Do you want some help?" he said, nuzzling his chin down into her neck. She tensed up and shimmied away to get out of his grasp.
"Frank, I'm sorry, honey, but I just need to get this done."
Franklynn took a step back. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she said.
"Are you sure?"
She let out a short, irritated, staccato sigh: "Eh. I just feel uncomfortable. I'm tired and I've been on my feet all day and I just need a break. I'm sorry."
"No need to apologize." He stood there staring at the back of her neck for a moment. "Are you sure I can't help you out with the dishes?'
Frank nodded and turned and shuffled out of the room. He wandered into the family room and thought about turning on the TV, but decided that his evening would be better spent reading, and so he went and got his copy of Dan Bailey's newest book. He sat down in his easy chair, turning the pages but failing to absorb anything that he was reading. He was just too tuned-up to pay any real attention to it. Meanwhile, he heard Peyson climbing the stairs and turning on the faucet in the sink in bathroom. She was going through her usual nighttime routines: brushing her teeth and flossing, washing her face, applying night cream, and so on. She would be preoccupied for at least fifteen minutes, and Franklynn quickly weighed his options. She was tired and in a foul mood, and so he knew his chances with her were essentially nil. All right then, he muttered to himself. Time to take matters into my own hands. He set the book aside and stood up and went to the basement door, which he closed and locked behind him, and he made his way down to his makeshift office, complete with desk and computer and gooseneck lamp. Sitting down, he could think about what Howell had said earlier, about rules.
He got the computer up and running, and thought to himself, It's time for a little Mark of Cain action.... As the browser loaded, he hesitated: he knew he would feel badly if he went through with this, but then again, he was practically going crazy. He wiped his damp palms on his pant legs, and went ahead and navigated to his site of choice: something called "Ginormous Black Asses." One glance at the images and he was entranced; it was as if fireworks were going off in his skull. He unzipped his pants and tugged down his garments, and after a few minutes more, he was finished, and a flood of emotion washed over him: relief, exhilaration, happiness, and, of course, guilt. Profound guilt. He used the box of Kleenex on his desk to clean up the mess he'd made, and then exited out of the browser, gazing one last time, longingly, at the woman on the screen.
On the one hand, he felt better: much of the tension he'd felt was gone, but it had been replaced by a low-grade feeling of worthlessness. Franklynn carried the soggy Kleenexes over into the bathroom and flushed the toilet and washed his hands, and then he went back to the computer and set about deleting his browsing history, clearing out his cache, and running a virus scan. Peyson never used this computer, but that didn't necessarily mean that she wouldn't decide to come snooping around one day. Frank shook his head, disappointed in himself. He had had occasional lapses in control like this ever since his days as a missionary, where he had learned all too well the importance of lying about such things. He saw the way that the elders who confessed were humiliated: some to the breaking point. Frank made a quiet promise to himself that he would repent morning and night for the next week over this. He would ask Heavenly Father for strength.
Once he was finished cleaning up his computer, Franklynn surfed over to MormonDiscourse.com to look over the threads. There was nothing new, and "Korihor" hadn't followed through on his threats: there was no mention of plagiarism, no sign that anything was afoot. Nonetheless, Franklynn couldn't help but wonder about Lagoon. Perhaps it would be a good idea anyhow: to get out of the house and take Peyson and the girls for a day out, riding the roller coasters. He had fond memories of going through the double loops of the Colossus as a teenager: of that sense of terror and weightlessness simultaneously, the sense that his stomach was being ripped from its moorings. He smiled at the thought for a moment, and then the gloom settled over him once again. For reasons he couldn't yet fathom, he felt a deep sense of dread, as though his real problems were only beginning.
To be continued in Part IV: Dylan Cross and the Two-Day Seminar
beastie wrote:Chili, fritos, and ginormous black asses. It doesn't get any better than this.
Absolutely, after all it is football season.
a.k.a. Pokatatorjoined Oct 26, 2006 and permanently banned from MAD Nov 6, 2006
"Stop being such a damned coward and use your real name to own your position."
"That's what he gets for posting in his own name."
2 different threads same day 2 hours apart Yohoo Bat 12/1/2015