The Smiling Jesus Caption Game ©

"We’re geniuses!” – Nate Fuller, Smiling Jesus Caption Game © co-creator

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” – Stacy Lawrence, Smiling Jesus Caption Game © co-creator

The Smiling Jesus Caption Game© is sweeping the nation by storm. As co-conceiver of this wildly fun, hilarious, fun for the whole family game, I offer an exclusive behind the scenes story of its conception and real life examples of how to play.

The initial inspiration for the Smiling Jesus Caption Game © was a sacrament meeting program featuring a painting of a smiling Jesus which looked an awful lot like Jesus was posing for a modern day senior yearbook picture. I featured the picture on my blog and my faithful readers were quick to award him a variety of Nazareth class of 18 A.D. superlatives including best beard, most likely to succeed and best personality, although unfortunately he came up way short in the biggest flirt and class clown categories. It was immediately clear that smiling Jesus provided an amazing amount of untapped comedic potential.

The game really began to take shape several weeks later when Stacy’s Grandma Henry, famous for circulating faith promoting emails, forwarded an absolute gem to Stacy entitled “Pictures of Jesus Laughing….Precious”. Little did she know the revolution that she had just set in motion (I still don’t think she knows, so please keep it on the D.L.). Attached to the email were 7 pencil sketches of Jesus laughing, having a good time, being the fun guy that he rarely gets portrayed as. It was clear to the games co-founders that these pictures were missing captions, hence The Smiling Jesus Caption Game © was created.

I promised real life examples at the beginning of the post, so I included several of the now famous pictures from Grandma Henry’s email along with some of the captions that Stacy and I came up with. Enjoy!



"and then i said, 'peace be still'... yep, nothing to be concerned about, ladies... all in a days work." -Stacy

"Jesus: Suffer the children to come to me, that's my motto!
Woman 1: (thinking) gosh! it's so hard to find a family guy these days!" -Stacy




"You give such snuggly wuggly huggies!" - Nate




"I KNOW YOU SWALLOWED MY CTR RING PUNK NOW COUGH IT UP!!!!!" - Stacy

After feeling a forceful rumbling from the baby's rear end, "Whoa Jr...Let's get you back to nursery Pronto!" - Nate




""The smell of his hair is unmistakeable!! I love Johnson & Johnson No more tears!" -Nate

New Niece

Yesterday afternoon my new niece Kierra finally arrived! I'm digging her hairdo.

Engines Revved at a Stoplight

Late Thursday evening I made a trip down to UCSD’s Giesel library to check out some of their Mormon themed books. As I was skimming through Thomas O’Dea’s classic “The Mormons,” a folded printout fell onto the floor. The counter-cult had left there calling card, a print-out from Mormon Research Ministries about the Book of Mormon and DNA. I pulled it out and set it aside.

Next, I thumbed through Hardy’s “Solemn Covenant” and once again found the print-out compliments of Mormonism Research Ministries. This time it was a testimonial from a lady who had spent 20 years as a Mormon and then decided to get the heck out of dodge.

UCSD has an extensive Mormon Studies section, completely taking up 2 bookshelves, comprised of 200-250 books. Given that the randomly selected books that I had picked up from different shelves had both had been visited by concerned Evangelicals, I wondered about the rest of the books. Sure enough, somebody had taken the time to pain-stakingly produce several hundred printouts and insert one into every Mormon themed book in the library.

I removed the print-outs from the dozen or so books that I looked at that night. As I did, I imagined somebody returning the next day to take tally of how many printouts were missing and reporting back to his counter-cult ministry that twelve people had been exposed to the “real” Mormonism through their diligent efforts. Nobody would be there to burst their bubble and let them know all their efforts were wasted on an already slightly disgruntled Mormon who found their stealth tactics disingenuous.

I felt defensive for a moment. I contemplated going through all the books and undoing all their tedious preparation. Standing there in the library I was reminded of something I had concluded years earlier: The Evangelical counter-cult is riding the intellectual short bus. I had spent way too many years in my teens and early twenties playing cat and mouse games with them. I would feel all the dumber for playing along on this night. I couldn’t be bothered to go through a dozen more books, let alone two whole book shelves to undo their work. I dumped the dozen or so printouts that I had collected in the recycling bin on my way out and walked out of the library with a smirk on my face, feeling satisfied that the short bus had revved its engine next to me at the stop light and I had refused to race it.

Bing

On June 3rd Microsoft launched its new search engine Bing. While I haven't been able to make the jump from Google to Bing, there is one feature about Bing that I L-O-V-E. Every day the search engine adds a new background image. Generally, the images are of places around the world. The images are consistently amazing.

I found myself always adding them as my desktop wallpaper at work, so I spent a couple of hours writing some code that downloads the days image and sets it as my wallpaper. I have slowly been building an impressive repository of the photos. Here is my top 5 from the last 6 weeks:

5) Cinque Terre, Italy




4) Moorea Island, French Polynesia




3) Chocolate Hills, Phillipines




2) Preikestolen, Norway




1) Pemmukale Tavertine Pools, Turkey

Grandpa gets down in church

Bahahaha!!!

Flash Flood Mania

My new hobby is watching flash flood videos on youtube.

Iconic Internet Videos

The highlight of my weekend was making my way through urlesque.com's "100 Most Iconic Internet Videos." My fave 5:

5. Star Wars Kid



4. "I like turtles" boy



3. Sneezing Panda



2. News Reporter Falls Smashing Grapes



1. Charlie Bit My Finger

Smiling Jesus

Nazareth High School Class of 18 AD.

2008: The year of the Mormon PR disaster

The Mormon church has seen better years than 2008. Looking back on the year, it turned out to be a particularly tough PR year for the church. In a recent Salt Lake Tribune article entitled “A Year of Scrutiny for the LDS Church” Peggy Fletcher Stack takes a look back at the year 2008 for the LDS church. Summed up in a sentence: Scrutiny doesn’t always feel very good. Between Mitt Romney’s Presidential bid, Proposition 8 backlash, and the hoopla surrounding the raid of the Texas compound of the polygamous FLDS sect, the church experienced an unprecedented amount of time in the lime light of the national media. There were some interesting points brought up within the article, especially the commentary by Philip Barlow, the head of the Mormon Studies program at Utah State University.

Regarding Allegiance to the Republican Party

Although a large percentage of Mormons are Republican stalwarts, Mitt didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome from the party’s large evangelical constituent. One pastor even went so far as to say “A vote for Mitt Romney is a vote for Satan.”

Philip Barlow wondered, “Will Latter-day Saints now begin to question their allegiance to the Republican Party, or even move into the Democratic Party in the future, especially if Barack Obama is successful in his first term?”

Regarding Homosexuality

After stating that the churches high profile involvement with Prop 8 has potentially set it up as a symbol of the restriction of human rights Barlow says, “Not many years from now, 2008 may be seen as a turning point for the LDS Church in addressing the reality of homosexuality. The church's theology was formed at a time when homosexuality could only be construed in biblical terms as ‘abomination.’ Because of experience and science, today church leaders see the issue in a more complex light. They distinguish between feelings and actions, and they acknowledge that we do not know the originating causes of same-sex attraction. LDS founder Joseph Smith once said that 'by proving contraries, truth is made manifest.' As is the past, this may be a painful but auspicious moment in LDS history."

While I think Barlows speculation about a future in which the Mormon church is largely democratic and gay friendly is far fetched, I wouldn’t complain with that outcome. In my mind, the more likely outcome is that instead of jumping ship from the Republican party, Mormons will continue to buddy up with evangelicals in politics and on social issues when their man power and capital is needed in hopes that they will someday be admitted to their exclusive Christian club and political party.