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Okay, this is my first attempt at blogging. I have never done this before, so please keep the snickering to a minimum.

Let me introduce myself without getting too specific, so you cyberstalkers will have a harder time finding me. I am a middle-aged, happily married LDS white male. I have been a member of the church all my life, born and raised in the church. Went on a mission. Although I currently live in Utah, I am not from here, but eventually I will have to call myself a Utahn since I have lived in my current home longer than any home I lived in while I was growing up (my dad's job transferred him numerous times). I sometimes have a problem with Utah Mormons, for various reasons, one of which is cultural. I work in the automotive repair industry and am currently a Certified Master Technician for a major automobile manufacturer with Asian roots. I am left-handed, as are all three of my children, which I understand is an anomoly in itself. I sometimes think that I see some issues differently than many others partly because of the whole left brain-right brain thing. Or maybe I'm weird. Or just plain old cantankerous. After all, I am a left-handed, Scottish-descent, Scorpio.

I'll add more about myself later, and if you have questions or comments, please feel free to do so.

I was just noticing a credit card bill my wife had set on the counter to be mailed, and the place it was being mailed to is Palatine, IL. The name sounded familiar, and then it hit me. The spelling is extremely close to the bad guy in the Star Wars movies, Palpatine. Coincidence? Perhaps, but look at the similarities.

Palpatine started off as a good guy, helping people out, then as he gained power, he became more powerful and controlling, with the ultimate goal of ruling the universe. Credit cards start out as useful, good things that help us achieve good things. But if we allow them to do so, they become more and more powerful in our lives, and can consume us, and ultimately they rule our lives, and eventually we can become enslaved to them. Credit cards can take away our freedom if we let them.

So, my question is, it is well known that Spielberg took ordinary, everyday words and names and changed them slightly to make up the names of his characters. So when he came up with Palpatine, is it possible that he had a credit card bill that he had to send to Palatine, IL, and realized the similarities between his character and what credit cards can do to people? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I just sent this letter to a moderator. I didn't want to post it on the main board because it would likely be met with flames and "not-me's" and then devolve from there. But I did want others here to know how I feel about what's happening lately. I am troubled by what has been going on, and I think I should speak up before I abandon ship.

Here it is:

There is a saying popularized by the original grunge singer, Neil Young, that seems very profound to me. That saying?

Rust Never Sleeps.

Three simple, small words, but put together, they can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. What does it mean? Well, there is the literal definition, that rust doesn't sleep. What is rust? Generally, rust is naturally decaying iron or an alloy of iron, such as steel. When something is built out of iron, it immediately begins to break down, especially when it is exposed to the elements, usually water. It was discovered that if iron or steel has some kind of coating applied to it, that the process of rust is slowed dramatically. If you seal out the elements, rust has a harder time forming and breaking down the metal. For proof of this, just look at your car. If you get a rock chip in the paint, the metal underneath it is shiny and clean. But if you don't do something to protect the metal soon, rust will begin to form quickly, and will start attacking the body of the car from the inside out. The metal breaks down and the rust grows, undermining the integrity of the preventative coatings on your car. After a while, the chip in your paint grows, and if left unchecked, will eventually get large enough that large pieces of paint will flake off, exposing a large, rusty mass because the paint has nothing to hold it on anymore. The once-shiny exterior finish of the car is destroyed, exposing the truth that is ugliness beneath. The rust never slept, you did, and because you did nothing to protect your car it turned from something of beauty to just another example of ugliness in the world. The sad thing is, it could have been prevented if taken care of at an early stage, but now, it's gotten out of control, and it will take considerably more work to repair the damage now.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, I would liken it to ourselves. In life, we have our protective coatings. The gospel. The scriptures. Our relationship with God. Our friends. Many other things I can't think of right now. So, someone kicks up a rock at you. If you have a good protective coating, it may bounce off. So they kick up another rock, and another, and another until eventually they hit hard enough in a less-protected spot that it finally cuts through the surface. It gets past the protective layers. If you deal with it quickly and effectively, the damage can be repaired. But if you let the small damage go untreated, it will begin to grow, and fester your soul, and will eat at you, until one day the large pieces of your protective coating fall off, because they have nothing to cling to, they have been undermined from the inside because you let something small get under your skin. By this time, your ugliness is shown for all the world to see, and it is no secret that a once beautiful thing is now being destroyed and needs major work to correct itself. The sad thing is, it could have all been prevented if taken care of at an early stage, but now it has gotten out of control, and will take considerably more work to repair the damage now.

That's one of the reasons I sought out LDSTalk. I was looking for a place to help repair myself, to help me build up my protective coatings, so that when I go out into the rest of the world, I would be able to come back here to help repair the spiritual damage done when others throw the rocks of the world at me.

That's part of the reason why I don't enjoy the troublemakers here, they come in the guise that they are helping others, when in fact they are hurting others. They are not applying protective coatings, and what little coatings they claim to be providing are actually watered down or misrepresented as something else. When it becomes evident that the fakes are hurting the board, I believe it's time to empty the trash or find another place to help make the necessary repairs to our souls.