Tag: Humor

Inappropriate book club questions

William riffs on the concept of inappropriate book club questions with examples from the work of Josi Kilpack, Margaret Young and Coke Newell.

Jonathan Langford emailed me the link to recently. It reads: “If you were a cannibal and were eating the protagonist from your novel, which side dishes would be appropriate? Explain.”

He suggested that it might be fun to a Mormon literary version. Here are mine — feel free to add your own via the comment box:

“The parents of the protagonist in Margaret Young’s Salvador drive her in a white van with a big red stripe and navy blue hubcaps to El Salvador. The mother calls it the Yankee Doodle Dan Van. Is that an appropriate use of our nation’s flag?”

“Explain why even though Kit in Coke Newell’s On the Road to Heaven joins the Church and serves a mission, his past as a mountain hippy makes him unfit to marry your niece and/or granddaughter.”

“Why does Doug Thayer hate rich people?”

“Is Josi S. Kilpack’s culinary mystery series against the Word of Wisdom? Shouldn’t it be more like Carob Brownie or Banana?”

“What do you think the ‘B’ stands for in Linda Hoffman Kimball’s The Marketing of Sister B?”

A Utah Mormon Tasting Menu

Sometimes my mind goes to strange places as I attempt to find sleep. Sometimes that is (or isn’t) to your benefit. So with apologies to Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller, I present a Utah Mormon Tasting Menu:

gel-o with shredded carrot

a cube of wasabi pea flavored green gel presented in a nest of dehydrated shredded carrots

pairing: stewart’s ginger beer

russian navajo taco

indian fry bread circles topped with sour cream and caviar

pairing: martinelli’s sparkling apple cider

western crab cake

an alaskan king crab crab cake topped with a ranch dressing foam

pairing: thomas kemper root beer

artichoke with fry sauce

a chilled artichoke heart cup filled with fry sauce bubbles and topped with preserved lemon and dusted with cayenne pepper Continue reading “A Utah Mormon Tasting Menu”

LDSfic1stlines

Back in 2005, I posted a semi-humor piece called First lines for Mormon fiction. Back in June or somewhereabouts, it occurred to me that that same concept would be fun to use the motleyvision Twitter account for. I created the hashtag (a way to tag posts in Twitter) #LDSfic1stlines and started posting. A couple of other Twitter users thmazing (otherwise known as Theric Jepson) and chosha also got in on the act.

Twitter’s search functionality is kinda messed up (a bit ironic since the service just signed real-time search deals with both Bing and Google), but I was able to painstakingly grab most of the LDSfic1stlines that have been posted so far and have reproduced them below (not necessarily in chronological order). Here they are for your enjoyment — feel free to post your own in the comments or on Twitter (just make sure to use the hashtag so I’ll see them — or direct them to @motleyvision):

Wm: One fateful year, the Nielsens, as a show of solidarity with their Lutheran neighbors, gave up Jell-O for Lent.

Th: Porter Rockwell took a swig of his nonalcoholic whiskey and shyly waved at a lovely (yet modest) professional dancer. Continue reading “LDSfic1stlines”

To Build a Fence

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To Build a Fence

a public service message from

The Institute for Marital Concerns

Brigham Young Chapter


As all you RM gospel scholars know, Brigham Young once said:

    I will give each of the young men in Israel, who have arrived at an age to marry, a mission to go straightway and get married to a good sister, fence a city lot, lay out a garden and orchard and make a home.  This is the mission that I give to all young men in Israel.

This presents us with a distinct problem, if we 1) do not want to get married, 2) don’t want to get married, or 3) would really rather not get married.  If this sounds like you, then rest assured that we at the IMC are here to help you get out of what, at first glance, seems like a direct commandment from a prophet of God to get married. Continue reading “To Build a Fence”