1078: Magic Underwear

[YouFascinateMe]

I'm not Mormon, but was born and raised a Jehovah's Witness. We didn't wear badges outside of conventions but our one and only assignment was to spread the word of God's kingdom. Unless masturbation guilt and not celebrating holidays count as assignments.

Plenty of doors slammed in my face, although I never had the apparent Mormon strength to yell "FUCK YOU" in response. About four years ago I concluded it was a cult and left resulting in former friends and family members disassociating from and not talking to me to this day.

I voted no on the poll, anyway. Ryan'll come to his senses.

[Cry Havoc]

Had to finally register after listening to this show. Being a former Mormon myself, this brought back some memories.

You have to understand, he probably seemed hesitant to talk about the "magic underwear" for a few reasons: 1) You really can't talk about the garments as a Mormon. When you first get them you make promises to never talk about them or the other ceremonies/covenants associated with them except in vague terms. In fact, you're really not supposed to talk about the ceremonies to other Mormons either unless you are in the temple. 2) He was probably at least slightly offended that you kept referring to them as magic underwear. 3) Mormons don't like to talk about how their religion really is weird. They don't want to focus on their underwear or polygamy, they want to talk about other aspects of their religion. "Milk before meat."

And maybe he never experienced it himself, but there are some quotas for teaching people and baptizing on missions. On my mission, we had an Area Authority (big wig) come rip us a new one because we weren't baptizing enough people.

BTW, Kolob is the name of the star closest to where God resides.

[RachaelBachael]

On the subject of Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien's ratings tanking:

I think something they did not account for was the younger audience of high school students, college students, and people in their 20s. Most of them were the only ones up that stayed up late enough to catch Conan on late night. With Conan moving up an hour it shouldn't affect his ratings however high school students, college students, and people in their 20s love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. When Conan was on at 11:30, the younger people could watch Jon Stewart and then flip over to Conan to catch the whole show or watch both Stewart and Colbert and tune into Conan to catch the first guest. Now that Conan is competing with Comedy Central, Comedy Central is winning.

Older viewers who should like that Jay Leno is earlier aren't watching him because they would watch the local news which would lead into Leno. That late at night only Leno, Letterman, and the boys at Comedy Central are on so they would choose accordingly. Now that he's on at 10 he's competing with their "regular" shows and apparently people would rather watch the Real Housewives over Leno. Conan is tanking because he doesn't have his younger audience and the older audience does not understand how a masturbating bear and a rottweiler puppet can be funny.

And on totally different subject soap operas definitely have a huge market for items seen in the show. You can watch Lucky and Elizabeth get married on General Hospital, then head to abc.com and buy a replica of the engagement ring, the outfits the characters wore, etc. Bored housewives will buy tons of this shit. But also those are shows where outfits are more interesting than the plot. Unless Larry David's sneakers were bright yellow or made him fly I don't see how they're newsworthy.

[gumby013]

Originally Posted by Lanfear

Löwenbräu beer ist very nice and we had a lot of fun in their tent this year:

OOH! Blackout flashback!

[Thumbnail]

I once dressed up as a Mormon for Halloween (maybe some 7 years ago!). We were a big group and we approached people at the party with different books in hand. I had a diary so I just said different days "March, 30th. Lord be praised!" and left. One of my friends had a romance novel and said stuff like "And then his breath, heavy on her shoulder, became more and more intense, until they could not restrain their passion... Praise the Lord".
It was really fun. We ran into another "Mormon" at the party, too. If I can find the pics we took, a la Charlie's Angels, expressing our best abilities to evangelize, I’ll post them (basically, one knocks on the door, the other one tackles the person and the other one reads the Bible straight to their face). As far as religiously insulting, it surely beats the nun outfits!

[ThePinkSuperhero]

I listened to the first half of this show on the subway sitting across from Mormon missionaries. I kept laughing and then nervously looking at them as though they could hear me.

I did a play with this woman when I was in middle school, and I thought it was so odd that she always wore this white t-shirt under her bra. I thought she was just an odd lady, but I realized later she was a Mormon- you have to wear your temple garment closest to your skin, even under your bra. I can't imagine how uncomfortable that would be.

[Blitzgal]

It was interesting reading about how the Mormon church was created because it's such a perfect snapshot of how these religious faiths evolve. Smith started out with this really attractive message -- that people can have a personal relationship with God and receive "revelations" directly from Him. And for Christians who were raised with the idea that only the clergy can interpret the word of God that had to sound very appealing. However, he soon determined that if the congregation was receiving the Truth directly from God then they didn't really need an authority figure on Earth and he wouldn't have that much power or authority over them. So he backtracked on that and said that the only real and vital revelations would come directly to him as leader of the church.

And of course polygamy within the Mormon faith only came about because Smith was such a hornball he couldn't keep it in his pants. So coincidentally God told him that he needed as many wives as possible. Isn't it funny how things just seem to work out for those who are in leadership positions in these religions?

As a sidenote, I know an ex-Mormon and she told me that Edward Cullen from the Twilight series is pretty much exactly how Joseph Smith is described to all little Mormons, and she was skeeved out by how much Stephanie Meyer clearly wants to bone the Prophet.

[Midwest Mike]

Sounds like the Mormon's and the Geek Squad dress the same. Maybe the people Keith met on the street just wanted to help him with his computer problems.

[Kuroishiro]

religion shouldnt be the ruler with wich we messure a person, or something to that effect...

[Uncast]

Originally Posted by Blitzgal

As a sidenote, I know an ex-Mormon and she told me that Edward Cullen from the Twilight series is pretty much exactly how Joseph Smith is described to all little Mormons, and she was skeeved out by how much Stephanie Meyer clearly wants to bone the Prophet.

OK as an ex-Mormon myself, I'm a tiny bit ashamed I didn't get those clues right off when reading the books. YES now that I think about it, it's truly fucking creepy.

Oh and if you want to know the scariest/weirdest Mormon prophet, do some research on Brigham Young. The fact that they named their Uni after him is pretty fucked up. That man was a full on whacko racist, sexist, bigot power-mongerer.