Hills Like White Lamanites

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I dunno if I’m feeling overly emotional today or what, but this all chilled me to the bone (maybe that’s the side-effect from my fruit smoothie, though). Imagine being such an asshole you go to someone’s work to get them fired because words hurt your fee fees so badly.

Right, Mike?

- Doc

[Marcus]

I dunno if I’m feeling overly emotional today or what, but this all chilled me to the bone (maybe that’s the side-effect from my fruit smoothie, though). Imagine being such an asshole you go to someone’s work to get them fired because words hurt your fee fees so badly.

Right, Mike?

- Doc

Exactly my thought.

[Bill_Billiams]

I dunno if I’m feeling overly emotional today or what, but this all chilled me to the bone (maybe that’s the side-effect from my fruit smoothie, though). Imagine being such an asshole you go to someone’s work to get them fired because words hurt your fee fees so badly.

Right, Mike?

- Doc

It's the mopologist way.

[Moksha]

I dunno if I’m feeling overly emotional today or what, but this all chilled me to the bone (maybe that’s the side-effect from my fruit smoothie, though). Imagine being such an asshole you go to someone’s work to get them fired because words hurt your fee fees so badly.

Right, Mike?

- Doc

I imagine it all started when one of the three shouted, "Apologetic road trip!" Most likely the look they will find on Merlyn's face is identical to one of the Kerrycatures.

[Tom]

Excellent work, Dr. Bobberson. Please continue.

Will Brother Steves attempt to counter the power imbalance in the stake president’s office?

[Dr Moore]

There is something about that bloody pink slab of prime rib that feels more focal than it needed to be. Dr. Bobberson appears to be weaving in a double entendre here, a metaphor of the Mopologist’s true prize. Hear me out.

Howell’s plate was already filled with food. The fries, roll, ham, salad, shrimp and crab. A very full plate indeed. These items are like the mechanics of apologetics: the research, data, linguistics, assembled arguments, etc. But the one thing missing until the end, the main course which sweetened the dinner roll in pink blood and intermixed with the ketchup-submerged fries, was the prime rib.

You can practically see that slab of mostly raw meat, infusing everything else on the plate with its pink juices. This slab of meat is the critic, whose “blood” makes every aspect of the “meal” worth the effort, I think. Howell’s dinner would have been bland and incomplete without the final outcome of slicing and skewering that raw piece of meat on a two pronged serving fork before laying it on top of the full plate. What a perfect analogy for the true motivation in Mopologetics: cutting and skewering a critic.

[Gadianton]

you definitely get the prize for best literary analysis this month, Dr. Moore. That was epic.

[drumdude]

I love a good juicy skewered critic. Especially one that has been slow-owned over the issue of child abuse in the church. The “our child abuse is only 5% instead of 20” retort really gives the critic meat a nice smoky flavor.

Sprinkle liberally with “Hitchens file” salt to taste.

[Dr Moore]

you definitely get the prize for best literary analysis this month, Dr. Moore. That was epic.

Humbled by your recognition, Dean Robbers. While my vitae now lists dozens of prizes for studies related to matters of historical innovation, such as backdated prophecies and misapplied loan shifting, this is the first time I’ve been nominated for any sort of literary analysis!

[Bob Bobberson]

Part IX: A New Direction

In a very short time span, Brett Steves had gone through a whole range of emotions: shame, fear, embarrassment, sadness, hope, hatred, bafflement, and finally: anger. As he made his way back to the Stake President's office, he was angry, and knew exactly what he wanted to say. He pushed open the door and sat down.

"Ah, Brother Steves! Good. Let's..."

"Now you just chill," said Brett. His voice was louder and firmer, though shakier, than he had intended. "I just came back in here to tell you to your faces that this conversation is over."

"What?" said SP Leonard. "Brother Steves..."

"No, no. No!" said Brett. "Enough. Who do you think you are? The Grand Inquisitor or something? And what is this packet you've walked in with? It's true what they say, then, that the Church spies on people?"

"I don't like your tone, son."

"And I don't like your tactics," Brett snapped. Krautheimer and Haynes looked at each other, and beside them, Stake President Leonard was growing red in the face.

"Do you know what you're doing?" said Leonard? "Do you?"

"I don't have to listen to this," Brett said, and he stood up.

"You are on the precipice of destroying everything!" Leonard bellowed. "Everything! Your wife! Your family! Your eternal salvation! My god, son, do you..."

He shut the door behind him, cutting off whatever it was that Leonard was saying. Brett's head was pounding and his shirt was damp with nervous sweat. He quickly made his way out of the building, got in his car, and drove home.



There was some debate about what to do with the images that Herb and Nephi had snapped outside of Brett Steves's workplace: whether the pictures should be posted to one of the message boards, or on some Church-friendly blog, or whether to send them to Steves to let him know that they'd been there. "Why not all of the above?" was Mitch Findlay's suggestion. Meanwhile, they all laughed and laughed at the pictures.

"I especially like this one," said Merlyn, pointing to the one where Mitch was shrugging. "You should give it a caption: 'What, me worry?'"

They all thought that was terrifically funny. When the laughter had died down, though, Merlyn bowed his head slightly and frowned: "On a more serious note," he said, "I haven't heard anything from Howell in a few days, and this is unlike him."

"No calls, emails, nothing?" said Herb.

"No: nothing. Nada," said Merlyn.

"Maybe he just doesn't have internet access?"

"Maybe. He definitely did have it at some point. But it's beginning to concern me."



When he'd arrived home, Brett had gone into the living room where Ginny was watching TV. She had already put the kids down for the night. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and then went and got on the computer and logged onto Mormon Discourse. Sure enough, there was a new thread that had been launched by Nephi Clark, entitled, "Skeletor Unmasked At Last!" He clicked on the link and quickly scanned over the opening post. Sure enough, they had outed him. The post was extremely long: the thread already had 5 pages to it and the opening post took up the better part of the entire first page. Someone had taken the time to comb through all his old posts and now here they all were, lined up to make him look like the most traitorous apostate of all time. There was even an image embedded in the post: it showed Nephi Clark and Herb McConkie smirking outside of his office building. They actually drove all the way up to Logan from Provo just in order to take this picture and taunt me! he muttered to himself.

He was still recovering from his encounter with the Stake President and the two men from the Strengthening Church Members Committee, but the upshot was that he had partially been expecting something like this. As he read on, he saw that the reactions from the apologists were almost universally positive, praising Clark for the detailed post (and Beau Taylor, who has apparently gathered all the postings--including not public material from Brett's Facebook account) and were exulting in the fact that he would now be "accountable." He wondered what that was supposed to mean, exactly. Not all of the pro-Church posters reacted favorably, though. Some, such as GardeningChick57, Big Bad Helaman, and Unk Jet, were saying that the Hinton Institute apologists had crossed a line. Merlyn Young, in particular, seemed incensed over this criticism.

"You can't make the argument that there is any equivalence here at all. We have been attacked on a nearly daily basis by Mr. Steves and his friends for over a decade. And he has attacked us by name while hiding behind a very convenient and, it seems to me, cowardly cloak of anonymity."

"What's to stop him from creating a new sock puppet?" someone pointed out.

Brett chuckled at this, but he was tired. Exhausted, in fact. He wanted to read to the end of the thread, though, and so he kept reading.



Merlyn Young was enjoying himself immensely. He'd just gone to fetch himself a fresh can of caffeine-free Mr. Pibb and now he pressed the button on his stereo remote so that it switched discs from the 4th to the 5th of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. He cracked open the can and poured the entire contents of it into his Schott-Zwiesel wine glass, managing to spill a few drops of it onto his desk in the process. He used the side of his hand like a squeegee to sweep the soda droplets onto the rug.

He had been simultaneously taking in the grandeur of Nephi Clark's stupendous post on Mormon Discourse while simultaneously exchanging witty repartee with them in a private chatroom. But it was getting late, and everyone except Merlyn, ever the night owl, had gone to bed. Merlyn clicked over to his email program to see if he'd gotten anything from Howell. It was now closing in on a week since anyone had heard anything from him. Merlyn deleted all the new spam email, and saw that although there was nothing from Howell, there was an email from Elder Pitt's secretary. He was calling an emergency meeting for tomorrow, concerning "the future of the Turley J. Hinton Institute." Merlyn took a gulp of his Mr. Pibb and sat back in his chair.

This was certainly concerning; he'd been of the understanding that everything was in place for him to step into the role of Editor in Chief for the Journal and that Howell would stay on as Director of the Institute, but perhaps something had happened to Howell? For a moment, Merlyn began to wonder if this would be his moment. What if YOU were the Director of the Hinton Institute? he mused to himself. He had several ideas as to how he'd change things, but he stopped himself. Howell was one of his oldest friends, after all, and still, no one had heard anything from him.

Merlyn decided to put the thought aside for now, and so he navigated back to Mormon Discourse to see if there were any new posts. It would give him time to clear his head and to finish his glass of Mr. Pibb.


...To be concluded in Part X: D&C 121:39