by Mark Bibbins, Editor

The word sexy is sexy. That’s how culture works. If you’re not “trying too hard” you’re trying hard not to. Irony is seen as a filter on sincerity; in truth both irony and sincerity are filters. In its pure form the data is too powerful. All language is descriptive.

*

When you suspect someone is in love with you, you begin to treat them with contempt. Cruelty is justified, even an obligation. You engage in the feminism of detesting attention. Despite your complaints, you hope to remain attractive. In fact, you become more so. Men test the limits of your capacity for cruelty, follow you into bars.

*

If information has replaced the story, what will replace information? We have arrived at the future, but its use is restricted to the military. UIs aspire to the uncanny valley. We don’t want to get over Romanticism. The bankruptcy of collective memory. The etymology of “hi.”

Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of The French Exit (Birds, LLC) and Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press). Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, Pleiades, Salt Hill, and Sentence, and her nonfiction has appeared in Mantis, Open Letters Monthly, and The Monkey & The Wrench: Essays into Contemporary Poetics. She currently lives in Boston, works at a software startup, and blogs at The French Exit.

by Brian Montopoli

Mormons don’t let outsiders into their temples, and they themselves must be deemed in good standing to enter. That means submitting to a lengthy interview process that includes testimony to the Gospel, a declaration of pure bodily condition and evidence that they are keeping up with their tithing. If they pass, they enter wearing all white-suits or full-length white dresses, focused on interacting as directly as possible with God.

Despite the strict rules for entrance, the church still wants curious outsiders to get a sense of what they’re missing. At the Salt Lake Temple, which I attempted to visit on a recent Sunday evening, one can enter a visitors’ center, pass an animatronic Joseph Smith, handsome and asexual, and see a large-scale model of the Temple, cut in half so you can see all the rooms.

In the basement are 12 cows, standing symmetrically in a circle. I asked my guides, two young female missionaries who quickly befriended me upon my arrival, if Mormons actually kept cows in the basement. The actual Temple, one told me, contains 12 statues of what she unselfconsciously called “golden oxen.” The model shows that the Temple baptism pool rests directly above the oxen — it looks as if it’s held up by their strong golden oxen heads.

The Mormon temple is central to the process of becoming more like God, a process very much focused on the family unit. The controversial practice of baptizing the dead is necessary, Mormons believe, because it’s the only way to allow family members who did not accept the church to be with their families in heaven. The Temple is also where families of the living are bound together in sealing ceremonies that ensure they will be together in heaven, and where marriages are performed between two committed, chaste Mormons, marriage being a central step in the journey toward godliness.

Next to the Temple is the Tabernacle, a turtle-shell-shaped building whose stunning acoustics derive in part from the almost impossible lack of support beams. I entered not long after interfaith celebration had let out and took in the massive pipe organ towering over the pews below. Owl-faced older women with black name tags roamed the aisles, making stragglers feel like they’d done something wrong.

My guides were Sister L. and Sister R., both perhaps 20 years old, the former a blond onetime hairdresser and the latter a Japanese-American young woman with a black mole just off the tip of her nose. Sister R. corrected me when I asked why Mormons don’t drink caffeine, a conclusion drawn after a fruitless search for a coffee shop near the Brigham Young University campus in Provo two days before. “We can’t have coffee but we can have Coke,” she said, grinning like a teenager who had just broken an unimportant rule. “Just no strong drinks.”

I couldn’t help but like Sister L. and Sister R., and be drawn to their earnestness, their charm, their lack of moral ambiguity. They carried with them a happy self-assurance that made skeptical questions about their pitch feel irrelevant, maybe even pitiable. When I asked if there are gay Mormons, they responded sure, of course; there are probably some around here right now.

“It’s just,” Sister L. said, “that the Church feels strongly about marriage, and you can’t have sex before marriage.”

I asked if that meant gay Mormons just don’t have sex.

She nodded and smiled and said: “Uh-huh!”

There was no subtext in that affirmation, nothing but pure enthusiasm: I got it. Asked about the Church’s political activity, specifically California’s Prop. 8, Sister L. said the Church isn’t political, it just gets involved in issues it cares about. “It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing,” she told me.

I didn’t know much about Mormonism when I visited, but I did know Mormons believe Jesus came to America after his resurrection, so I asked exactly how he got here. Not for the first time, Sister L. tried to press a copy of the Book of Mormon into my hands.

“We don’t know!” Sister L. said, her eyes wide and wonder-filled. “We just get to imagine it!”

The sisters told me on three separate occasions that Mormons are just like normal people, a note struck repeatedly on the Church’s website, which is peppered with photos of people just like you who happen to be Mormon. This is true from a religious perspective: The vast majority of Americans believe in God, a communal leap of faith that seems far more significant than the differences among believers.

And yet the otherness is undeniable. Mormonism is a relatively young religion, and people are, rather dramatically, either in or out; the middle-ground option available in older Christian faiths, the acceptability of casual and compartmentalized belief, is simply not an option.

Indeed, the rules are strict and many, and they must be followed. That means no alcohol, a two-year pause in life for missionary work (the church chooses where), fealty to an honor code that recently resulted in one of BYU’s best rebounders being suspended for premarital sex. It means wearing the “special underwear” worn by Mormons after completion of the Temple endowment ceremony, and ignoring the smirking references to it by outsiders.

And yet while I came away from the visit convinced that Mormonism isn’t really built for the modern world, I did understand the appeal. It starts with the Sisters themselves, content in their unshakeable faith and clear path forward, and extends to the massive Temple itself. It looks benevolent at night, the lighting perfectly appointed, but it’s also a massive presence, incongruent among the low buildings and wide streets of Salt Lake — a Disney castle that escaped from the fantasy realm and, refusing to accept its nature, remains in the real world.

Brian Montopoli last wrote for the Awl about porn valley .

Photo by Bjørn Graabek, via Wikipedia Commons.

A couple of days ago I was walking up Orchard Street on my way to get lunch, when I saw a mail carrier with her cart approaching a door to an apartment building. Just as she was about to enter, the door opened and a young woman came out leading a large, muscular pitbull on a leash. As soon as the dog saw the mail carrier, it growled loudly and lunged at her, jerking its owner off balance. The mail carrier jumped too, and hurried behind her cart for protection. The dog’s owner, who was a slight, pretty woman, and very fashionably dressed, leaned all her weight against the leash, scolding her dog, dragging it away and apologizing. That’s funny, I thought, dogs really do hate mail carriers.

The dog then changed direction and pulled the woman into the street, right in front of an oncoming cab, which slowed to stop. The dog stopped too, and then squatted to poop. Right in the middle of the street, right in front of the cab. The owner made noises of anger and embarrassment and gestured that way to the cab driver, who smiled and didn’t honk his horn or anything. I thought, Ha! Dogs! They’ll never stop doing things that bother us. And as I walked away, I wondered as I often do, what it was that made people — especially people in the city, especially those who have big dogs — want to go through all the trouble.

I would never want to have a dog. And every time I hear one barking or see poop on the sidewalk, I wish everyone in New York felt the same way. But here, this week, the Humane Society offers a compelling argument for the value of dogs: The 10 finalist in their Fourth Annual Dogs of Valor Awards:

There’s Sirus, from Conneaut, Ohio, who was shot as he protected his family from a gun wielding home invader.

And Gangsta, in Seldon, New York, who alerted family members to the fact that his owner was having an epileptic seizure in a bathtub filling with hot water.

Effie, in Pine City, Minnesota, who led her owner to a 94-year-old neighbor who had fallen and lay bleeding and unconscious in the snow.

Diamond, of Hayward, California, and Coco, from Summerfield, Florida, both of whom woke up their owners and saved them from fires. (Poor Coco perished from smoke inhalation four days later.)

Emmet, too, from Boise, Idaho, gave his own life in saving his owner from a live power line that had fallen in their yard.

Yogi, from Austin, Texas, who ran and got help after his owner had fallen from his mountain bike and broken his neck and lay paralyzed on a remote trail.

Wyatt Earp, from Royal Oak, Michigan, who barked until help arrived after his owner, a diabetic, lost consciousness due to low blood sugar.

Ceili, from Portland, Oregon, who apparently tried to warn her owner that he was about to suffer a heart attack and alerted his wife once it had happened.

You can vote for your favorite Dog of Valor “People’s Hero” at the Humane Society website. I think I won’t, but if I did, I would probably choose this pooch from Forsyth, Ohio:

Doug Claypool wanted to read his book. So around 9:00 p.m., he left his family watching TV and went into his room, taking his 3-year old German shepherd, Sarge, with him and closing the door. He fell asleep, but Sarge woke him around midnight by barking at the bedroom door. When Claypool opened the door to investigate, Sarge raced down the hallway, sniffing the air. He suddenly stopped and made a u-turn back down the hallway to Claypool’s 15-year-old daughter’s room. Sarge sniffed the door, then scratched and growled at it. Claypool tried to open door, but someone inside the room was holding it shut. Claypool ran to another part of the house and grabbed his handgun. He then forced his daughter’s door open, and ordered the intruder to get on the floor. Sarge started towards the unknown man, but Claypool called him back and held the intruder at gunpoint until sheriff’s deputies arrived. Claypool’s daughter had remained asleep when the man was in her room.

Dumb dogs. Sometimes they save us.

Local man desires employment, can lift heavy things, manage offices, type on computers, serve food.

by Abe Sauer

We’ve published a lot over the last couple weeks about the battle in Wisconsin over labor, and nearly always been critical of Scott Walker and the Republicans. So I found a reasonable 20-something Wisconsinite named Sarah Helms, who was willing to explain her support for Scott Walker and his bill. Her answers have not been edited at all.

The Awl: Where do you live, work?

Sarah: I’m currently unemployed since returning from my tour in Afghanistan. I’m planning on starting school next semester. I live in Madison, WI.

The Awl: How would you sum up your reasons for supporting the bill?

Sarah: From what I’ve read it seems that Walker is trying to restructure how money is divvied up and to lessen, and eventually eliminate, the possibility of receiving more funds than needed for certain programs and organizations. I believe that taking away unnecessary bargaining rights for public employees, especially teachers, is important to our students in order to improve Wisconsin’s education system. It seems that teachers are afraid of being paid what they’re actually worth.

If we pass this bill we might see a change in the quality of teacher that comes to our school system and a significant weeding out of bad ones. If there’s one field where jobs should be EXTREMELY competitive, it’s in schools. If there ever were a profession where job performance should hold the top ranking reason for better pay and incentive, it’s being a teacher. Why do teachers deserve to get paid better than everyone else? Just because they say so? All because they formed a little elitist club that’s good at bitching. They’re taking paid days off of work and leaving children all over the state with an even worse education. All because they think they deserve to get paid better based on their motivation to argue rather than their actual (sub-par) performance. Some teachers even encouraged students to join a walk out and march to the capital. When the students got there, they didn’t even know why they had come or what was going on. That’s a prime example of the lack of willingness to actually educate students.

The Awl: Do you believe that removing collective bargaining is a core need of the budget or would you still support it with just the increased benefit payments?

Sarah: Why would public union workers accept the part of Scott Walker’s bill that makes them contribute more into their pensions and pay a more reasonable amount for their health care but want him to compromise on the part that would take away some of their bargaining rights? Is it because they want to LOOK like they are making a sacrifice? That way they can greedily strike again and get back what they lost in only a few years. Then what would have been the point? It would be idiotic to propose changes in benefit contributions AND NOT take away their right to bargain. If teachers don’t like how they’re being paid, or any other employee for that matter, then they should chose another job location or field.

The Awl: Have you ever been part of a union?

Sarah: I haven’t been part of a union. I imagine if I were part of a union I would probably be firmly persuaded to oppose this bill. To be a sheep and join the herd only to be led to the wolves.

The Awl: You went to Madison Area Technical College. The budget will cut $71.6 million from the state’s technical college system, about 30% of the system’s funding. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Sarah: I believe that schools should run on the funds they receive from students in the form of tuition. If they believe that it isn’t enough money then they need to restructure the way they do business. They should cut back on unnecessary spending in order to operate within their means.

The Awl: Are you on, or have you ever been on, BadgerCare (or similar state Medicaid)?

Sarah: I am currently on BadgerCare but only use it for one prescription. I receive health care through the VA for being a veteran.

The Awl: Did you vote for Walker?

Sarah: Yes, I voted for Gov. Walker and I’m proud of my choice. I did a lot of research before I made up my mind. The right to vote comes with the responsibility to make an informed decision. This can significantly lessen the chance of regretting your judgement.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.

“The students memorize all they can, usually in 15-minute stretches of tedious silence. Then they spill their memory to recall, say, 120 random words in exact order. (That is roughly the length of this article to the end of this sentence, but with the words shuffled.) Or maybe they will try to match 159 unfamiliar names to photos of strangers, or recall 227 exact words, capital letters and punctuation of a poem read for the first time. Those are, after all, the national records held by members of the Hershey memory team.”
 — These students at Hershey High School in Hershey, Pennsylvania are very impressive. Of course, from what we learned yesterday from what Maureen Dowd learned from Joshua Foer, we know that they probably do so well by envisioning their family members performing disgusting sex acts.

“In college, during the time that I went to a college that had majors, I thought mine would be English, so I took a poetry class because it was required. The professor had long, long center-parted flat brown hair and was rumored to be going through a divorce. The celebrity she most closely resembled was the farm wife in the painting American Gothic crossed with an Aubrey Beardsley engraving of the Lady of Shalott. (This is how I thought about things at the time.) We read poems by women poets who were dissatisfied with their domestic lives, or by Randall Jarrell posing as one of these women…. Everything about the class (including me) was a cliché, but I do remember enjoying it, and actually that I remember it at all speaks volumes in its favor.”

“For the better part of 30 years, men’s shorts have been inching away from their own breviloquent description. My call for a return to a common-sense inseam has been met over time with complacency, staunch resistance and — on the occasions I’ve dared to lead by example — merciless ribbing. Just as I was beginning to lose heart, it was revealed that several designers are featuring shorter men’s shorts for spring. Revivified, I strode out into the Los Angeles sunshine to gauge whether the American public had regained its appetite for men’s bare thighs.”

In our HD Age of Instant Replay, the best seat in the house is always the couch at your house. That was where one could behold this travesty of Sports Justice. Justin Brownlee is out of bounds and lobbing the ball into the crowd with time left on the clock. The ball should go back to Rutgers and the end of the game could continue. Maybe the referees had reservations at the Olive Garden? Why do I, dude hanging out at his house, have a better vantage point than anyone else in Madison Square Garden? Maybe there should be a referee watching the game at my apartment so the ends of games won’t end like this? The Big East is the currently the most competitive conference in college basketball and their championship tournament was broadcast nationally today on ESPN. Rutgers had taken nationally-ranked St. John’s deep into the game. As Brownlee receives the ball he thinks the game is over and celebrates prematurely. If only we had a way of showing the world that there was still time left. And could bring everyone back onto the floor and play the rest of the game. Well, they could and they should.

Sports is the Fair Version of Real Life. Which is why we argue so fervently about upholding rules and ruling fairly. The Big East released a statement that was like, “Yeah, that was weird. How that game ended. Whatareyougonnado?” I’m not saying that Rutgers would have won the game if they got the ball back with 1.7 seconds left. But maybe they would. We shall never know. I play it out in my head and someone ends up taking a contested three and I can see it to the top of its arc. And then it just stops. We’ll just never know if that ball goes in or not.

Rutgers valiant but short run in the Big East tournament will be marred by this. And the imaginary hanging asterisk all sports fans carry around with them everywhere will now forever float above this game. We have the time and technology to rectify this injustice. Put the teams back out there. The Big East simply won’t. They may be trying to give WFAN’s St. John’s Alum Mike Francesa a conniption, as he canceled a Robinson Cano interview and turned red for the rest of his show yelling. The ESPN crew had the mistake highlighted 5 seconds after it happened. Maybe Doris Burke should be deputized as a old man referee helper? Does ESPN’s basketball crew have to have a former referee nearby during all games to embarrass referees for making mistakes the way Fox TV does for NFL officiating crews?

In basketball, anything can happen. Especially when you’re only down by 2 with 2 seconds. Any shot will do to send the game to overtime. As Pasch says, 2 to tie. Three to win. Fouls can be committed. Foul shots can be taken. Who knows what can happen? That’s why we watch basketball. For the sake of all parties, put the kids back on the court. It’s not too late. We sit through some NFL replay challenges that seem like they take days. If tomorrow they decided to make this right, it would be right. Send both teams back to MSG and let’s see what happens. It’s not just the fairest thing that can happen for Rutgers. It will silence all questions St. John’s will have to deal with over some botched refereeing.

The Jim Joyce/Armando Galarraga Imperfect Perfect Game bad call didn’t determine the outcome of that game. Or who would be in the NCAA tournament. Or who would win the Big East Tournament. Or anything except Galarraga and Baseball History. We’re trying to teach kids if they play by the rules they will get a fair shake in this world. What does this cowardly low-road teach us?

Jack Meyer, who managed Harvard’s endowment until 2005, at which point some people tried to run it into the ground, with a little help from pals from Goldman Sachs, while Meyer went off to run a hedge fund, just spent $15 million on a house in Dutchess County, so all’s well that ends well.