The Mormon Church holds a sort of general assembly type meeting twice a year, a meeting called General Conference where the leaders of the Church give talks about the same stuff you have to hear about over and over again in Sunday School every Sunday, stuff like:
1. The importance of being faithful
2. The importance of prayer in our lives
3. The importance of serving others
4. The importance of reading the scriptures
5. The importance of paying tithing
6. The importance of thong panties
Did you read the whole list? Because I wanted to see if you were paying attention. It’s hard to pay attention at General Conference because it is the most BORING meeting in the history of religion on earth. They always give the same talks about the same things and there is always one story about how someone learned an important lesson while attending to the cows on the farm he grew up on in Idaho. And at one point someone will say a sentence that involves the word MOUNTAIN and it will come out sounding like MAO-IN, because that’s how they say things in Utah, and I will take hot forks of displeasure and gouge out my eyes.
Not that I will be watching.
In Utah the Mormons can just roll out of bed and watch conference because the local NBC affiliate is owned by the Mormon Church and hey! There’s the Prophet on Channel 5! In Utah General Conference is like a vacation from having to go to church because you can sit there nude and watch all the talks while eating Cheetos. But in other places, places far away like Tennessee where I grew up, the Mormons actually have to get dressed up and go to Church and watch it via satellite. And they have to sit there and try not to fall asleep or become suffocated because the pantyhose their mother made them wear is cutting off circulation to the lower half of their body.
I’ve been telling Leta all week that she’s going to Conference Camp this weekend because my mother is going to tend Leta for two days during General Conference while Jon and I take the mini-honeymoon we never had up in Park City (thank you, Google!). For two days Leta will have to fold her arms and be reverent while the Prophet and the Apostles of the Mormon Church give talks about thong panties. And while she learns about the importance of prayer and scriptures and tithing and blah blah blah and sin and trials and tribulations and Welcome Welcome Sabbath Morning!, Jon and I will be sipping bourbon in a hot tub on the deck of a private suite overlooking one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world.
I know that my brother is reading this and he is secretly praying for the salvation of my soul, and I want to assure him that my soul is in good hands. I sold it to Google a little over a month ago.