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Both Wrong and Bad

Secular and religious students spend a lot of time evaluating the rightness of The Book of Mormon. Believers seek to establish the truth of the empirical claims made in and about the book, which are fundamental to their belief. Nonbelievers seek to disestablish these claims. It is a lot of great, scholarly, fun. But, it seems to me, that more time could be spent evaluating the goodness of The Book of Mormon . Suppose we grant that it is an ancient work, recovered in the nineteenth century, and translated by supernatural means. This would make it right, but the enlightened reader must still grant an even more obvious case against the book: it is not good. It is not good in a literary sense, to be sure, and we can look into that later, but it is not good in an ethical sense. I could cite its misogyny[1], brutality [2] , or injustice [3] , but for me, the glaring ethical failing in The Book of Mormon is its racism [4] . Early in the text, we pick up a thread of ...
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Mid Ohio

  Into the river, Compelled where it wandered, I gasped only to catch The need to gasp. A moment to think - back To the plummet, while Every sense battled. Screaming. Run. Cold ripped into me. Pain cut at my ankles. Wet suffocation, a Black abyss. Regret. Panic. Forget. Sadness. What was I thinking then? There is nothing worth this Fall into all of the  Wild, good, night. Swim to the right again - Hit something under me - Slide over slimy scales: Swimming life The size of the creature, So calm in demeanor, The depth of the river Cannot match. Dying living Fishy Monster Right. Left. down. I cannot give into this, Mindless instinct kicks. Fuck what I’m dying for. I choose life. Right to the homeless place? Right to the family? Right to the miserable Loneliness? Left to the home I chose? Left to the cops and courts? Left to the battlefield? One soldier. Maybe staying. Maybe dying. Leg ripped open. Left to Sobriety. Left from the cavity. Left from the creature of Thrashing life. M...

Tanner from Idaho

Hi, I’m Tanner. I’m from Idaho. Solid intro Tanner, none of this is weird yet. Why does anyone introduce themselves based on where they are from anyway? Like, why is it that the most important piece of information we must know about people is where most of their baby pictures are? I might as well say “Hi, I’m Tanner, if my pog investment from the 90s works out after I die, most of them are in Idaho.”  Remember pogs? Those circles that came in big green tubes. They were just circles. Made of paper. And when I was a kid, nothing was more important to me. And we were in a war at the time. SEVERAL! It was almost as if I could walk in on my mom in tears witnessing the wreckage of the Oklahoma City Bombing and still ask for pog money. Almost like that.  That was so weird. They were just paper circles. Unless it was a slammer! How cool were slammers? If you're with me about slammers I guarantee I could guess the year you were born. I can’t defend the nineties, I just lived through th...

Edgar Allan Poe Show

(Prior to the beginning of the performance a small writing desk sits no one. A lamp, a black quill pen with its inkwell, and a parchment are on the desk. Should guests be curious enough to have a look at the parchment, they will simply read the words “a love that was more than love”. After announcements the lights are all shut off for enough time with no action to make the audience uncomfortable until the lamp lights up, revealing Edgar Allan Poe. He is furiously writing.) Poe. Yes? (He stares around the room at various audience members.) Poe. What is it that I can do for you tonight? (pause) Perhaps the removal of some pretense will make some one of you brave enough to tell me what it is you want. And why it is that you have come. I am, in fact, Edgar Allan Poe. Ah, I see, I am a strange being in your world and that does not shock me. I was a strange being in mine too. This, however, here with you - this is not the strangeness of oddity shops or mummer shows. This is the high strangen...