How many hours did I sit in godawful, boring Mormon sacrament meetings, where some d*psh*t high councilman went half an hour overtime reading an "Ensign" essay on tithing or "The First Vision"?

How many hundreds of thousands of words of Mormon literature did I read, covering everything from why it was okay for Joseph Smith to sleep with other men's wives and his housemaids, or why Brigham Young was justified in covering up the Mountain Meadows Massacre, to why blacks couldn't have the priesthood, and then could, or Little Tommy Monson's heroic endeavours bringing cupcakes to aging widows while he was a bishop?

How many times did I read through the Book of Mormon, full as it is with plagiarized Bible passages, plagiarized sermons, and sheer fabrication? How many General Conference talks did I listen to - and how many of them can I remember now? Like, three? What did I ever learn from a talk by Gordon Hinckley? Literally, nothing. In over three decades of Mormon membership, I never heard one single valuable thing from Hinckley, Monson, or most of the other GA's. And how many times did I read over my patriarchal blessing?

Like all my readers, I have literally wasted hundreds of thousands of hours of my life on insipid, fabricated garbage. Yes, there was the odd pearl of wisdom here and there - usually from World War II veterans telling war stories during a talk - but overall, the trash to treasure ratio in Mormonism must be around a million to one.

I submit that there is more wisdom in Lynyrd Skynyrd's classic song, "Simple Man", than there is in the whole of Mormonism.

Judge for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMmTkKz60W8

Waiting for Ronnie to come back down from heaven,

T.

To me, "Simple Man" is a lot like the Beatles' "Revolution." Good lyrics, at least for some occasions, but delivered with a boring, uninspired melody and sloppy, self-absorbed, dare I say drug-impaired musicianship.

I recently encountered one of the British Maoists mentioned in "Revolution." He's highly unstable and scares the hell out of me.

I think enhanced is a better word.

How many service hours did I spend in activities that would have been paid jobs in a normal situation?
How many hours behind the piano or organ?
How many hundreds of hours working with children?

I spent a long time in the church and gave valuable service, and, though I know, I know, I know...we aren't supposed to expect payment for serving God...

But I figured it out once, and at going rates, I've lost out on over a quarter of a million dollars.

White Cliffs

You have committed blasphemy against Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and the rest of Skynyrd. You will now be cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. There will be no forgiveness for you, neither in this world, nor the world to come.

Ronnie is our god, and the only with whom we have to do.

Freebird is alive and well...


If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.

Great song, I totally agree, Tal.

In the meantime, there's this little slice of heaven on earth:

http://www.lynyrdskynyrdhistory.com/park.html