I’ve been thinking about my Mormon friend Mandy’s parting shot in her comment to me the other day. She said:

I am truly sorry for your mistakes or those done to you by members of the church, because IT IS TRUE.

I’m wondering a few things. Why in the world is Mandy sorry for my mistakes? And what mistakes is she talking about? I suppose she is presuming, as many Mormons do, that the only reason someone would LEAVE the Church is because they couldn’t live up to its standards.

I’ll have Mandy know that I left emotionally when I was fifteen, and physically (I stopped going because my father couldn’t force me to once I moved out) at eighteen. At that time, I was a virgin who had never tasted alcohol, used illegal drugs, or swam on a Sunday, when the Devil has control of the water (as all good Mormons know). In other words, I did NOT fuck up. I didn’t leave the Church because I couldn’t live up to its standards. I LEFT because it couldn’t live up to MINE. I expect a little basis in fact when I am expected to believe something is the only true thing in life. I have a hard time understanding the whole “burning bosom” concept. That’s heartburn or acid reflux, folks, and they have MEDICINE for that.

I’m also a little curious about the whole IT IS TRUE business. Mandy, does putting the words in caps make it so? Maybe I should throw it back into your face. IT IS NOT TRUE. Now she’ll have to comment again, saying, IT IS TRUE. Pretty soon, my entire blog will be nothing but IT IS TRUE, IT IS NOT, IT IS TRUE, IT IS NOT…. An eternal fight between me and my “sister.”

I think I’ll try something else instead. Let’s see if it works. CONSTANTINE MAROULIS IS THE REAL AMERICAN IDOL. Stay tuned.

A recent article in The Washington Post featured the Mormon, Utah-based businesses that make a living editing films to make them clean, according to the LDS rules of life, or “sanitizing” them. Thank God we have these people around to protect us from ourselves, and the horrible, evil filmmakers from Hollywood.

Family Flix, which claims to have the toughest standards, removes “sexual innuendo,” including suggestions or depictions of homosexuality. It recently edited “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” an animated film with a PG rating, to eliminate a scene in which a male starfish character sings and dances while dressed in fishnet stockings and high heels.

Kudos to you, Sandra Teraci, owner of Family Flix, for keeping our young people safe from fishnet stockings. If anyone has ever tried to wear a pair of fishnet stockings, you should write her a thank you note. They are worse than the worst pair of pantyhose. At least hose hold the fat in. With fishnet, the fat just kind of oozes out through the little holes, unless, of course, you are the anorexic Olsen twin.

And, well, phew! I’m very appreciative to Teraci, because you just never know when a young, impressionable starfish is going to take off singing and dancing in fishnet stockings and heels just because they saw it on television. Everyone knows how much time starfish spend watching television. It’s a real problem in the ocean communities. After that whole MTV Jackass snafu, we know how impressionable (and frankly, quite stupid) young people can be. We should certainly assume that young starfish are the same. Because surely this woman is not saying that a young HUMAN person would be highly influenced by a starfish wearing fishnet stockings, and spend the rest of their life watching Will and Grace reruns and patronizing the arts?

Despite my gratitude to all those people like Sandra who want to PROTECT me from the evils of this world, I do see some tiny problems in her arguments. First of all, the majority of homosexual men do NOT wear high heels and fishnet stockings. While I suppose there is a certain portion of the homosexual community that might have an affinity for fishnet stockings, that also applies to the heterosexual community. Ever heard of cross-dressers? Most of them are NOT gay. I’m sure she’s thinking of the drag queens of the world, and frankly, they are few and far between. Fishnet stockings and heels are NOT an icon of the gay world. And while I admit a lot of Mormon women don’t wear fishnet to Sunday meetings, they’ve been wearing heels, quite respectably, for years.

Is it the fishnet/heel combo that has Teraci reeling?

“We don’t hate homosexuals,” says Sandra Teraci. “We just don’t think that lifestyle should be glorified. It’s becoming rampant in more types of films.”

I must be watching different movies. And I still don’t get how a starfish in fishnet stockings glorifies homosexuality. As far as I know, Starfish are asexual and they don’t even have legs. Having not SEEN the Spongebob movie, I’m even more perplexed as to how a starfish is WEARING stockings….

Furthermore, isn’t there something masochistic about a sea creature wearing FISHNET anything? Perhaps that is the REAL problem Teraci has with the starfish….

I’m gonna start this post off with an explanation. I have two books available. One is SisterWife, a good title, a decent book, but one that no New York publisher chose to buy. So a small independent (read POD) publisher bought it, and through that sale, I caught the eye of MY editor, at St. Martin’s Press. She asked to see the book I had just written, called Outer Darkness. She bought it. They then retitled it. Guess what they called it? Yep, Wives and Sisters. So now I have SisterWife and Wives and Sisters for sale.

(FYI: Despite its timeliness, with the whacko fundamentalist Mormon polygamist leader and his end-of-the-world doomsday claims, comparable to Warren Jeffs of the FLDS religion, SisterWife is only available for two more weeks, and then it will disappear into the Netherworld. I have not continued my contract with the POD publisher. It’s a good book, but it’s my first book. Time to move on.)

I just wanted to clarify that I am NOT title-challenged. I know people wonder. So there you have it.

After I wrote my first book, and began searching for a publisher, I also ventured out and applied for employment with the Sundance Film Festival. That worked out okay, and I worked as an editor for the 2001 and 2002 Sundance Film Festivals, which is seasonal work. Fun work. CRAZY work. Middle-of-the-night-deadline, you-cannot-possibly-find-this-anywhere-else-in-Utah work. Because of that job, I recently found my name on a list of Latter-day Saint And/Or Utah filmmakers. Odd. Really odd. I’m have no problem imagining myself an And/Or, because I sure don’t fit into the other category (LDS), but I’m not a filmmaker. I DID work for the Sundance Film Festival, but, alas, it was as an EDITOR! As in writing, people! Editing. Fixing typos, misspellings, dangling participles, etc. All that good stuff. Thanks to my work there, I did have the opportunity to serve as a filmmaker liasion, and I did rub shoulders with some celebs, including the lovely and fabulous Christine Lahti, Mary Kay Place, Albert Brooks, and the incredibly handsome Billy Wirth, but mostly, I EDITED. I did have a few people ask to read my book, SisterWife, which at the time was my only book, but not a whole lot came of that. Obviously. Oh, the glamour! Cabana boy, bring me my champagne!

Actually the truth is, I found it ODD that this SITE, www.ldsfilm.com, would deign to mention me at all. Most of the time, the LDS crowd spends hours wanting to poke pins in my eyes. Or disavowing me. Or crowing over the ONE (can you read, ONLY ONE) bad review of Wives and Sisters. They don’t spend a lot of time claiming me as one of their own.

Well, now they have. Sort of. On this site.

Natalie R. Collins
Latter-day Saint (Raised as a Latter-day saint, now disaffected and a non-churchgoer). Would-be movie author. Wrote a novel titled Outer Darkness, about her upbringing in a Latter-day Saint home and why she doesn’t like Latter-day Saints any more. Served as an editor for the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 and 2002. Said that through Sundance she met people interested in screenplay rights to another book she wrote: SisterWife, about “Fundamentalist” Mormons practicing polygamy, a practice banned by the Church in the late 1800s.

Of course, my first instinct was to scream BITE ME at the top of my lungs. Disaffected???? Disaffected means discontented as toward authority. Of course, to be disaffected toward authority, means I would HAVE TO CONSIDER THE MORMON CHURCH MY AUTHORITY, which we all know I don’t. So that definition doesn’t really work for me. Oh well.

Would-be movie author? Of course my books have been shopped in Hollywood. That’s par for the course, people. Is this their attempt to make me appear a “has been?” “Well, she tried, folks, but it JUST didn’t work, because she is an apostate and we ALL know what happens to apostates! Their brains shrivel up and wither away, and they either come back or hide in their houses for the rest of their lives because THEY KNOW THE CHURCH IS TRUE, and that WE ARE RIGHT, THEY ARE WRONG, and they really shouldn’t leave THE CHURCH because someone insulted them.”

This killed me. “…why she doesn’t like Latter-day Saint any more”? Are these people MORONS? I mean, I know they are Mormons, with the extra M, but I like a whole LOT of Latter-day Saints. I just don’t believe the Mormon Church is the only true CHURCH and that all the others are “…an abomination in his sight…” Thanks for the quote, Joseph Smith, Jr.

This stuff can be very tiring. I do not DISLIKE Mormons, as in, the people that believe in Mormonism. At least, not as a rule. I just don’t believe, like you do, that it is the ONLY TRUE THING in life. Mormons can be great people. Most of them are very nice. I don’t really agree with their beliefs, but they feel the same way about me. We just agree to disagree and move on. Unfortunately, as a whole, Mormons can’t do that.

Thus, my blog. Trapped by the Mormons. Do you REALLY have to ask WHY I am writing this?

I received two comments today that mostly amused me. Despite the fact these people picture me walking around with a bright red vein constantly popping in my head, screaming obscenities and kicking puppies, I’m not very angry. I think this stuff is FUNNY. Somehow, they missed that.

Keep writing. It gives me something to blog about.

First, I got this comment, from “distugusted.”

You have no right to judge those you don’t understand.
distugusted

I have only this to say. You have no right to comment on blogs when you can’t spell. Come back with a dictionary.

I also got this email, from someone who really, really KNOWS THE CHURCH IS TRUE, nameofjesuschristamen. I don’t really want to make fun of her, because she was mostly nice, and I know she really believes what she is saying, but since she DID come to my blog and comment, how can I not address it?

Dear Natalie,

I do sense a lot of anger coming from you. It seems to be directed toward a church which has done so much good in the world today. Your comments seem to show your insecurity about yourself. If one finds pleasure in venting about what one has made out to be a “big bad church” it shows that the value of other things to do in life don’t seem to be giving you any sense of worth or happiness. Its a mind game of sort where you justify your insecurities by picking on the mormon church. Yes there are imperfect people in the church and lots of stuff floating around on the web about the church (most of which are unfounded and cannot be acurately referenced) but if you would read the news and do a true study, you would see the good that is being done by the church and its members. By their works ye shall know them. I hope you find really happiness in living yourlife, instead of taking the “victims” way out and complaining about something you really know nothing about. I am truly sorry for your mistakes or those done to you by members of the church, because IT IS TRUE.
Mandy

Dearest Mandy,

I am not angry. Sweetie? If YOU do a true study, you aren’t going to like what you find. See, there really is NOTHING to support Joseph Smith’s claims in the Book of Mormon. Nothing. Nada. Zip. No evidence at all it EVER EVEN HAPPENED. Don’t you find that just a teensy odd? In fact, DNA evidence shows that it’s pretty much all just a made up fairy tale. I live in the real world. You ought to try it.

I am no victim. I am NOT taking the victim’s way out. And I don’t have an axe to grind. I just think it’s stupid. As long as people keep telling me it’s true, you’re going to get my opinion back. Doesn’t mean I’m insecure. Does mean I have my beliefs, just like you. Oh, and JUST LIKE YOU, I think I have the right to say what my beliefs are. Funny how that works. As for insecurities, backatcha sweetheart. You are so insecure about what you believe, you ended up at my blog, and felt the need to use derision to bring me back over to the DARK SIDE. LUKE, I’m YOUR FATHER. No, no, no, use the force….

Um. Sorry. ANYWAY, I don’t have the proverbial axe to grind, but I do have a blog to write, and because of people like you, I can’t write about anything BUT Mormons.

I would love to tell you some other stories, say, the one where my friend and I were sitting together with a group of Godly people, and the speaker was telling the story of a student she had worked with who had Tourette’s syndrome. People with this disease sometimes shout out profanities, because they cannot control it. Well, the speaker claimed that this boy had been raised right, in a home with no profanity, so he never did this, and I leaned over to my friend and said, “Damn good thing my kids don’t have Tourette’s,” and she said, “Fucking right.”

See? That’s kind of a funny story. And it really happened.

But no, I can’t tell it, because people like YOU keep writing me and telling me I’m angry, and I just have to tell the world what I keep hearing from the Mormons. Is it possible I’ve become the Mormon equivalent of Andy Warhol’s FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME? Are you people writing me so that I will feature you in my blog?

Well, I suppose as long as I serve a purpose in this world….

If one goes by the profuse amount of hate mail I get from Mormons, I am going STRAIGHT to hell, and there ain’t no handbasket included in the deal. Well, as long as I’m going, at least I’ll be in good company, as my guest today, author Kathleen O’Reilly offers up her book, The Diva’s Guide to Selling Your Soul, as a guest of this unholy blog.

Call me V. I used to be a nobody, just a girl from New Jersey who was probably going to hell anyway–or worse, mediocrity and a size 14. Now I get whatever I desire just by casting a little spell . . . a flawless body, a luxury penthouse, and a Fifth Avenue shop where rich women clamor for my overpriced handbags. Even better, I have power. I can taunt my ex-husband, break hearts without guilt, and love every minute of it. My secret? I lost the one thing I never needed in the first place: my soul. I sold it. And you’ll never guess who’s got it now.

Hmmmmm. I’ll play, I’ll play. Jerry Springer? Dr. Phil? Lost and found?

I LOVE the premise of O’Reilly’s novel, which strikes to the core of every uptown girl. Love, beauty, success–all can be so fleeting, and so hard to find. What if all you had to do was strike a deal, and it all became yours?

Although…is the DEVIL really the DEVIL I’ve always known as Satan, with a capital S, not to be confused with Santa, as the severely dyslexic sometimes do. Speaking of which, am I the ONLY person who has ever noticed that Santa and Satan have EXACTLY the same letters in them? Oh, I’m so easily sidetracked.

Back to O’Reilly’s novel. I’ve always had my suspicions about just WHO might be masquerading as the Devil in these Latter-Days, but I never would have suspected a gossip columnist. But hey, it makes sense. I bet Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts would back up that theory!

So, let’s all go out and buy Kathleen’s book. It sounds like great fun and Lord knows we can all use an amusing read. Life is too short without humor, and O’Reilly has plenty of it to go around.