What Every Missionary Needs

Every time I went into the BYU bookstore I found something else I hadn't seen that was awesome. The first time, I found the religious books. The second time, I found the religious paraphernalia: These signs were, like Simon, in the section full of stuff for missionaries:
... of which, I think, the coolest example was this action figure:
I so wish I was making this up.

Anyway, though, the bookstore also had the most amazing language section I've ever seen.
I almost picked up a book on the Navajo verb. But who has the time?

Ah, and just upstairs from the library, in an underused hallway, I found a series of at least 20 portraits like this one, about which I think I will say nothing whatsoever:

Sin

The conference continued today, and you can tell how excited Team Alberta was. Well, I don't look that excited, but maybe being on planet BYU was getting me down. Everybody felt a little restrained, let's say, so we decided to take the night off to go downtown. At first, downtown didn't seem that much better, what with its blatant racism:
Like, whatever. I'm not so crazzy. I don't even drink five alive any more. Nor do I have a stuffed duck:
Then I saw something that did remind me of home:
When I saw her sultry lips and bulbous bouffant, I felt like I was back on earth. A place where people actually sin. That inspired most of us to take part in the sin of boutique shopping:
A sin in which Simon would have no part:
Finally, we stopped by a grocery store for some beer. Much to our surprise, even beer is a sin since, it seems, it may actually have, if you can imagine, some alcohol in it!
That didn't stop us, though:
Oh, and you can't see it from here, but that's a Polygamy Porter. [Motto: Why have Just One?]. Polygamy, incidentally, not a sin, though it will get you excommunicated from the regular LDS church.

Brother Brigham, Brother Young

My brother Simon came from Colorado to rescue me from my slides, and the two of us went to check out the BYU campus. First, we found out that the student newspaper has a pretty wide purview. It looks like they take their name pretty seriously, too, judging by the amount of space-monitoring equipment they had:
We couldn't find the conference (not having looked up any of the locations) but we did find out that BYU was as homogeneous as we had heard, at least when it came to film classes:
Afterwards, we headed down to the malt shop to get some dinner. I had a guacamole sandwich, not realizing how literal the name was:
And me and Simon each had a malt:His was Strawberry and mine was Peanut Butter and Banana:
It was one of their 20 most popular flavours, after all.

Culture

I'm in Utah, absorbing the culture. That means that my hotel bed-side table is more fully stocked than usual, as is my Mexican restaurant salad bar:
Moreover, they have managed to develop a clothing store tailored precisely to my generation:
Chris was concerned, and, as it turned out, he had good reason to be:
I can handle the outrageously offensive depiction of women, and I can handle the Jesus, but I can not handle them being on the same t-shirt at the same time. I don't know if that woman is being exploited, but it looks like that guy is trying to bite off one of her lips. I think Jesus is going to give him a high-5. Good thing imagining his mom being electrocuted hasn't got him down.

Anyway, thank goodness, I could get back to culture with which I was more familiar at the hotel:

In Case you were Wondering...

Steve Dusey guessed the correct answer. Nobody wins.