'They seemed unto him but a few days'

What do you guys think of Ferdinand doing all this work for Miranda?

True, a couple who instantly falls in love with each other and pledges to marry one another is a little ridiculous in reality. Sure, dating before engagement is famously brief at BYU. But I think most couples at least know each other's names before they get engaged. (I could be wrong.)

But setting that aside, is Ferdinand compounding the insanity by doing all this senseless work for the one he loves?

I don't think so.

I've been happily married for over two years. And I don't hesitate to say that I would have stacked a thousand logs or a million logs if that's what it took to marry Erin.

A big question on BYU campus is, "Is he/she the 'one'? How do I know?" It's the most important decision of our lives,* and it can be a hard one. But I think one way to know if he/she is "the one" is by how much you are willing to sacrifice. To have a successful marriage, you have to be able to sacrifice everything.

I was lucky to not have to sacrifice too much in order to marry Erin. But being in love with her did affect many decisions I made. She was one of the reasons I changed my career path and decided not to keep trying to get into the BYU animation program. I probably would have switched to communications anyway, but I would have been more willing to take low-pay, high-hours jobs at little newspapers all over the country to work my way up the career ladder. Now, I want to skip all that and go to law school, which I hope will lead to less transitory work. I also had dreams of doing all kinds of travel, like every college student who wants to backpack through Europe or South America. I was lucky enough to travel to Mexico for my honeymoon with Erin, and go to New York City with her and our daughter for my summer internship. But much more exotic travel than that would be way too impractical and expensive now.

Erin and me at Chichen Itza pyramids in Mexico

Erin and me on top of the Empire State Building

I also gave up R-rated movies. I hadn't really made my mind up about whether I was against watching R-rated movies, but after meeting with Erin I decided not to watch any more from that point on.

Erin was telling me about a conversation she had with some friends who talked about how much time their husbands spent playing video games. In one case, a woman said while she was dating her future husband, if she had told him "You have to stop playing so many video games," it would have been a deal-breaker.

That's just sad to me. I just can't imagine liking video games, or anything, that much that it would prevent me from marrying Erin. Just thinking of the words, "Sorry, but I have to have my video games," and saying them out loud, I would listen to myself and realize how dumb it all sounds.

I know our culture often portrays marriage as a drag, and a wife as a ball and chain brandishing a whip. But really, it's like what Neal A. Maxwell said about the kingdom of God: "If you have not chosen the kingdom of God first, it will in the end make no difference what you have chosen instead." I think the same holds true for marriage. If you don't choose marriage, and to be totally devoted to it, then it won't matter if you chose convenience or idleness instead.


*The relevant quote is in the last paragraph of Gordon B. Hinckley's talk.

Bring me that horizon

So for now I'm moving on to the next assignment in my Shakespeare class: The Tempest.

I don't know anything about The Tempest, other than I remember seeing the "Wishbone" episode way back when. ("Wishbone." Man, what a great show that was.)

Here's something cool that I found in the first scene:

"Boatswain: Do you not hear him? You mar our labour; keep your

cabins: you do assist the storm.

Gonzalo: Nay, good, be patient.

Boatswain: When the sea is."

I like the boatswain talking about the sea as if it's a real person, as if the sea could be patient or could use some assistance in its storm. It seems like that's how a real sailor would talk, especially one in Shakespeare's day who was probably more superstitious and more likely to believe in Poseidon, Neptune, etc.

And I also thought it was interesting that, even though everyone on the ship thinks they're going to die, the royalty still apparently thinks there's time for complaining to the sailors. I think it's a sign of the "divaness" of the upper class, that in the middle of a deadly storm they feel so inclined to clash with the "blue collar crowd." Seems to me like "straightening deck chairs on the Titanic."

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Now, on to Act I Scene II: What do all these people have in common?

Luke Skywalker

Harry Potter

Mia Thermopolis from The Princess Diaries

Woody from Toy Story 2

Perdita from The Winter's Tale

Miranda from The Tempest

That's right - they all had secret identities and destinies that are revealed to them in a major plot point of their stories.

Why do you think that element is used so often? Is it because we all have that wish? To someday miraculously find out we are something more than we thought? That we "smack of something greater than ourselves"?

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When Prospero said that Caliban was "A freckled whelp hag-born—not honour'd with a human shape," I thought, "Well, then what does he look like?" Click here for the ideas some people have come up with.

A lot of them remind me of Gollum, which makes sense, because Caliban does seem like quite the contemptible little creature.

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The Tempest will be our next field trip, this time to Salt Lake City. I wonder how they're going to show the storm in the first scene...I'm guessing it will probably be like this:

Thar She Blows
The Truman Show — MOVIECLIPS.com

...just kidding.

Welcome to Refudiatin'

So, I have a total of four blogs to my name: first, Adventures in Animation, a short-lived blog for sharing my sketches and drawings while I tried to get into the BYU animation program (to no avail); second, J Squared, a personal blog that has evolved into a source for all my newspaper articles and cartoons as well as some political commentary; third, J.J., Erin and Allisyn, the blog that tracks all of my adventures with my wife and one-year-old daughter (mostly run by my better half); and fourth, Man Stuff, a collaboration with guys from the Ward Formerly Known as the BYU 5th Ward who wanted to offer a counterpart to their wives' mommy blogs (my contributions are usually related to BYU sports).

Now, if I were to tell you that I was starting a new blog, your first reaction would probably be, "What? This guy blabs on and on and on as it is. He's on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Blogger, in the newspaper all the time ... isn't that enough already?" And after you come to terms with me blowing yet more hot air online or in print, you would probably guess the subject would be either trying to get into law school or our two months living in New York. But, nope, you'd be wrong.

Even if you had 100 guesses, you probably wouldn't think it would be Shakespeare.

But, yes, this semester I'm taking a Shakespeare class at BYU, one I've always wanted to find room for but couldn't until now. And one of the main class projects is a network of Shakespeare blogs manned by my professor, Dr. Gideon Burton.

I've always been interested in Shakespeare, I think because I've always been interested in a little bit of everything. Knowing stuff is just one of my favorite things to do. I like knowing current events, world capitals, old movies ("Oh, so that's why Citizen Kane is such a big deal") and classic rock ("Oh, so that's why The Beatles are such a big deal). It just helps me feel smart. And at the very least, knowing all this trivia helps me to be awesome at armchair "Jeopardy!" or it helps me understand all the pop culture references on "Gilmore Girls" or "Psych."

For some reason, I've always wanted to know more about Shakespeare. Shakespeare is probably the second most pervasive writing in the world, just behind the Bible. I would bet most people were introduced to lines like "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" and "To be, or not to be? That is the question" before they even entered kindergarten.

And around that age, when I knew all the U.S. presidents from Washington to Clinton and knew all 50 states in the United States, I actually looked forward to the day when I would read Shakespeare plays in school, instead of watching every token "Romeo and Juliet" episode from every family sitcom.

(Skip to the 3:50 or the 14:13 mark on the timeline)

In high school I read "Julius Caesar" and "Macbeth," and here at BYU I read "The Winter's Tale" and "King Lear." And now that I'm taking a class with Shakespeare as its focus, I'm excited to become even more of a Shakespeare scholar.

Two other bits of my personal history with Shakespeare: I've had two cartoons in The Daily Universe that were references to Shakespeare.

This was my response to the ridiculous hullabaloo over President Boyd K. Packer's talk last October.

And this was making fun of Sarah Palin for comparing herself to Shakespeare last summer (which also brought about the name of this blog).

And now, I'll close with this, since for the class I'm currently reading "Hamlet" (this is "The Simpsons," so there is some mild, not-BYU-appropriate swearing):