Ever since I watched that Don Bradley Liahona thing, YouTube has decided that Ward Radio (a loud and goofy Mormon podcast, not that there's anything wrong with that) is my kind of thing, so today at the top of my suggested videos was something called "Thomas B. Marsh is Getting OUT OF CONTROL!" (shouting in the original) -- about how suddenly everyone's hearing about him. The whole video is basically a response to this comment:
I just have to say, I NEVER heard the Thomas B Marsh bucket of cream story until I started listening to this podcast. Now I've heard it about 5,000 times.
Here it is. It's worth listening to at least part of it just to hear Cardon Ellis pulling one Biden after another. First it's "the Thomas B. Marsh bucket of story" (a smaller-scale version of Haroun and the Sea of Stories?), and then he actually calls him Thomas B. Bucket, which I think was one of the hero's relatives in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Thomas B. Marsh -- who supposedly left the Church over a dispute about a bucket of milk -- is one of the go-to examples of people leaving the Church for stupid reasons. I heard the story countless times growing up Mormon. The other overused story with this moral is that of Symonds (Simonds?) Ryder (Rider?), who is supposed to have left the Church because Joseph Smith misspelled (or did he?) his name. As I was listening to Cardon holding forth on Thomas B. Bucket and his bucket of story, my mind melded the two stories together and created something new.
First, though, I know my readers are a pretty cultured lot, but if you have somehow never seen the classic Sesame Street sketch "The Wonderful World of T-Shirts," you should watch that right now before proceeding.
Anyway, the scene that spontaneously emerged in my mind went something like this:
"No, no, I'm sorry. That says Thomas B. Shawarma. You see, Marsh is M-A-R-S-H. I think you made some kind of mistake.""Heh-heh-heh. I never make mistakes.""No, but you see there's no such person as Thomas B. --"Enter the Fat Blue Anything Muppet. "Hi. I'm Thomas B. Shawarma. Is my T-shirt ready?"
Yes, I know shawarma isn't an anagram of Marsh, but that's just what appeared, okay? -- fully-formed, as it were, like Athena from the headwaters of the Suez. I trust the reader has enjoyed this note.
5 comments:
Perhaps Mr Marsh will soon have his day in the sun and that's why he's in the air these days. At any rate, I only put "#1" to leave room for shifting gears later if it turns out to be necessary. We are choosing our own adventure here, after all. But for now I'm going w alternate ending #1. We'll see!
Disappointing that you didn't even try on Shawarma, William. Of course it is an anagram of Marsh!
Marsh Awa.
Awa, of course, would be Elvish for "to depart, go away", i.e., Marsh to depart. Given Marsh's (potential) upcoming 'exalted' journey and holding the keys to other-worldly destinations, this phrase could make a great deal of sense. Even your first sentence of this post where you say Marsh is 'in the air' is a funny phrase given the context, and my guess is you didn't even know what you were saying there. Though my own response to that statement is "No, not yet".
Anyway, put a little effort into it next time.
The real question, however, is at what point does the T-shirt store owner wonder what kind of society he is living in where everyone is ordering T-shirts with their own names printed on the front?
Very remiss of me not to have looked up the Elvish meaning of the leftover letters from shawarma. I don't know what kind of operation I'm running here.
Also interesting that this classic example of an apostate Mormon has the initials TBM.
The word Shawarma itself is from a Turkish word meaning "Spin or Turn"... seems like Marsh was the victim of some serious spin, but maybe things will turn around for him.
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