Brokeback Mormon

It's summer, and that means that Las Vegas is crawling with Mormon missionaries doing their thing. They're easy to spot: they look like these poor bastards right here. You can see them walking around in their black pants and their ties and their short-sleeved dress shirts. You might confuse them with junior partners in law firms, except that they look like douchebags and they all wear that goofy black nametags.

Now just think about this with me for a second. Male You and your male buddy -- let's go ahead and name them... let me see here... Ennis and Jack -- get sent somewhere far away from everything you know when you're both eighteen. This is going to last a year, and you probably won't see anybody you want to see again except your buddy Jack. If you're lucky, you get sent down I-15 to Vegas and there's no problem with temptation. But if you're not, maybe you get sent to some godforsaken hell hole like Saipan. After eight weeks in Guam, Jack's perfect, pink, ruby starfruit starts to look pretty inviting. It doesn't take very long for Ennis and Jack to go from being nice young men with pictures of bemulletted Jesus to being hardcore porn stars. If you need any proof, just watch this movie. It has it all.

In other news, I started my month of intensive summer school study yesterday. I'm taking two classes -- Classroom Assessment and Technology in the Secondary Curriculum -- and it has admittedly filled me with a sense of dread. I've never taken summer school before, and looking at a syllabus that only takes up a single sheet terrifies me. I realized on my drive home from the university last night that I haven't taken a class that met on consecutive days since the spring of 1999. That's right. Seven years. Not since high school. I cringed inwardly.