Random Thoughts from the Road

This afternoon, I drove into Salt Lake City to run an errand. However, when I arrived at my intended destination, I found that the door was locked, the lights had been shut off, and all of the employees had decided to pack up and leave an hour early, without telling anyone about it.

I could consider this a wasted trip. But the journey there and back was such an entertaining experience for me. Among other things, I observed:

- It's autumn out there! Autumn is my favorite season of the year. Today may have been the first time this season that I really noticed the colors of the leaves outside.

- About 30,000 banners advertising the Body Worlds exhibit have been placed along 400 South (which turns into 500 South up at the U.) alone. (No, I wasn't a math major.)

- I'm pretty sure that the U. student walking outside of Rice-Eccles Stadium would have shot laser beams out of his eyes, if he could have done so - like Cyclops from X-Men - at a car with BYU flags that drove past and would have scattered it to the four winds. There is definitely no love lost between Ute and Cougar fans, especially during rivalry week.

- I'm convinced that most orange barrels remain on the roads and highways not because of actual construction taking place but because somebody is too lazy to put them back where they came from.

- The guy wearing the dark-grey hoodie and jaywalking across the street (in a 40 MPH zone) at a leisurely pace, in the dark - which made him very hard to see - was obviously perturbed at me when I flashed my bright lights on him to make sure I didn't run him over and turn his body into ravioli. That was rude of me. I apologize, dude.

- The guy who ran up my tailpipe at a speed of at least 90 MPH - though I wasn't even in the fast lane - wasn't really doing it to bother me, nor was he late for traffic court. He was just trying to get his flux capacitor working again and return home safely to the year 2038.


- There are a lot of weird-looking churches out there, architecturally and otherwise. Though I will never set foot in most of them, I must admit that they have some clever signs posted out front.

Random Scripture of the Day:

"And Moron did that which was wicked before the Lord (Ether 11:14)."

I have nothing further to add.

A Whole New (Body) World

Last night, I went to see the Body Worlds exhibit at The Leonardo in Salt Lake City. My friends Marc and Mollie went along for the ride.

In school, science was never my best subject. I endured rather than enjoyed classes like Biology, Chemistry, and Earth Science. And I never took an Anatomy course. So, I stood to learn a lot from this experience.

One of the main things I gained from Body Worlds was a sense of awe, really, at the marvelous creation that is the human body. I felt an awareness of the millions, if not billions, of things that go on inside me each and every day, things I all too often take for granted, that make me what I am. Marc, Mollie, and I each expressed this thought - in one way or another - at various points throughout the exhibit. How fragile we are, indeed (as it says in the song by Sting).

I was also intrigued by things like the pair of lungs - charcoal black in color - from a smoker who had contracted lung cancer. That's about the best visual aid I can think of to dissuade anyone from taking up smoking or to persuade a smoker to kick the habit.

Human bodies were not the only bodies on display at Body Worlds. We stopped for a moment to look at the camels, in particular.

I'll admit that there were a few displays here and there that were a little bit creepy for me. (Whoever put it together certainly had a bizarre sense of humor - or something.) But those moments were few and far between.

If I'm not mistaken, Body Worlds will remain at The Leonardo until January. So, if you're at all curious, I would recommend checking it out.