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On 1/11/2025 at 8:15 PM, hobbes2702 said:

I thought the cgi in the closing sequence was terribad. Overall the show seems just fine. Seems much to caught up in being violent and gory just for the sake of it.

If you haven’t, read up on Mountain Meadows Massacre. That scene was….awesome. But yeah, there seems to be some gratuitous violence and gore, but it was a pretty harsh environment. That massacre is an absolute unbelievable moment in our history. 

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3 hours ago, Pam Cummings said:

I watched it. Definitely some outlandish stuff, like the random hills have eyes french family and the scene where the wolves are attacking the kids in the cabin instead of just eating the horses. I also found the ending a bit predictable, but it was a good series.

Pretty much this.  The last episode seemed formulaic, but overall it still an enjoyable watch to bridge to the final episode of Silo and start of Severance season 2.

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On 1/15/2025 at 1:30 AM, Stringer said:

No one noticed Jim Irsay in the first episode? He’s the guy who yells at the Indian girl when she takes the knife.

Holy shit. 

On 1/14/2025 at 11:27 PM, DDD Dad said:

I think maybe you’re a little too close to this. I’m just along for the ride. 
I get it. If I were more versed on the history I likely would be frustrated too. 

Yeah, he is close to it. I knew the massacre occurred over a several-day siege period. I thought the Missouri landscape was funny, and the travel sequences were odd to say the least. It’s still not Texas Rising bad or even close to it. 

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5 hours ago, Rex Kramer said:

If you haven’t, read up on Mountain Meadows Massacre. That scene was….awesome. But yeah, there seems to be some gratuitous violence and gore, but it was a pretty harsh environment. That massacre is an absolute unbelievable moment in our history. 

All I remember of it was when Taysom hurdled our DB, which was thankfully not in the movie version.

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5 hours ago, Rex Kramer said:

Holy shit. 

Yeah, he is close to it. I knew the massacre occurred over a several-day siege period. I thought the Missouri landscape was funny, and the travel sequences were odd to say the least. It’s still not Texas Rising bad or even close to it. 

Too soon.  

23 minutes ago, Not a cat said:

All I remember of it was when Taysom hurdled our DB, which was thankfully not in the movie version.

Also too soon.

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On 1/14/2025 at 11:05 PM, Hagbard Celine said:

episode 1 opens with a scene at "the end of the line", a railway station on an endless flat plain, ostensibly "St. Joseph" missouri

St. Joseph was indeed the westernmost point in the almost-3000 miles of the US railway system when the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad was completed.... in 1859

St. Joseph is on a river, not in a flat desert

after a 5-day riverboat trip from st. louis up the missouri river, the Oregon and California trails started from Independence MO

the mormon trail started either in montrose iowa (west bank of the mississippi across from nauvoo) but by 1857 had moved across the state to winter quarters, later omaha, nebraska

the oregon & california trails met up with the mormon trail in bridgeport nebraska

it took TWO MONTHS to travel from omaha or independence to fort bridger; the idiot that made this "series" portrayed it like a taxi ride around the block

I know, right?!!  They also never showed anyone shit in the entire series!  Do they really expect us to believe that people didn't shit in the wild west??  Totally unrealistic and required too much suspension of disbelief, 1/10 would not recommend.

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On 1/14/2025 at 10:29 PM, Hagbard Celine said:

The militia did not kill 17 small children who were deemed too young to relate the story. These children were taken in by local Mormon families. The children were later reclaimed by the U.S. Army and returned to relatives, and there is legend that one girl was not returned and lived out her life among the Mormons.[43]

Supposedly Brigham Young sent a bill to the U.S. Government for the care of those kids after they were re-homed back to their families.  There's regular hubris, and then there is "I'm a prophet of God" hubris.

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On 1/13/2025 at 2:07 PM, Dignan said:

Also, I'm only two in, but Kitsch should have punched the lady in her mouth several times already. "IF I SAY SOMETHING, LISTEN". Good lord, she is annoying.

Her character is a cliche. Mattie in True Grit pulled the same stunts but was a lot more likeable character.

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On 1/15/2025 at 10:07 PM, Elvis said:

To those that defend the natives and their culture, you might want to read Empire of the Summer moon (or listen, the audio book is excellent). 

 

Their ways and beliefs were truly savage. Like beating women to death with the woman’s own toddler’s corpse savage. Ever tried torture?  They make the Spaniards blush. 
 

 

You can't use the Comanche as a baseline for all Native American tribes.

They were the Vikings of the Southern Plains. They kicked the shit out of the other tribes and kept the Europeans out their territory. Hell, they defeated the Apache and took their territory. The French couldn't expand west or the Spanish north because of the Comanche. Mexico and Texas would get raided regularly by them and pretty much every government's flag that flew over Texas failed to defeat the Comanche.

They had a very spartan society where they just hunted and waged war.

Edited by F250
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On 1/15/2025 at 9:31 AM, lateshow said:

I've read a lot about this. Read Under the Banner of Heaven to learn more, if so inclined. It also gets into the human trafficking and sexual assault prevalent, often upon minors, amongst the Mormon sect as well. It was written by John Krakauer, a lapsed Mormon. 

this is the essential quintuple combo, read them in this order, not by the date of publication

https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Kingdom-Theocracy-American-1847-1896/dp/0874212456

https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Meadows-Massacre-Juanita-Brooks/dp/0806123184?tag=googhydr-20&source=dsa&hvcampaign=books&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxamqj7T-igMV1VN_AB0_ZzziEAAYASAAEgKh0fD_BwE

https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Limhi-Adventure-Territory-1855-1858/dp/0874215692/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Prophets-Brigham-Massacre-Mountain/dp/0806136391

https://www.amazon.com/Mormon-Rebellion-Americas-First-1857-1858/dp/0806141352

anyone who reads all of these and then wants to see in person the massacre burial cairns that were not discovered until 2014, i can arrange that

image.thumb.jpeg.b7857d57219f48675bc467683797740e.jpeg

 

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On 1/15/2025 at 10:07 PM, Elvis said:

I haven’t watched this but I will.

To those that defend the natives and their culture, you might want to read Empire of the Summer moon (or listen, the audio book is excellent). 

Their ways and beliefs were truly savage. Like beating women to death with the woman’s own toddler’s corpse savage. Ever tried torture?  They make the Spaniards blush.

the southern paiute, who were blamed for the meadows job by the brethren for 27 years, were a passive tribe whose economy revolved around the pine nut harvest

the utah paiute are down to less than 1000 today

starting in the 1780s they had 2 of 3 children kidnapped in to the slave trade, first by the navajo, then by spaniards, then by mexicans, then the kanosh band of paiutes, and finally by the brethren

were certain tribes vicious? yes

go visit the hopi mesas and the zuni

talk to them

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5 hours ago, F250 said:

You can't use the Comanche as a baseline for all Native American tribes.

They were the Vikings of the Southern Plains. They kicked the shit out of the other tribes and kept the Europeans out their territory. Hell, they defeated the Apache and took their territory. The French couldn't expand west or the Spanish north because of the Comanche. Mexico and Texas would get raided regularly by them and pretty much every government's flag that flew over Texas failed to defeat the Comanche.

They had a very spartan society where they just hunted and waged war.

i would like to subscribe to your newsletter

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5 hours ago, F250 said:

You can't use the Comanche as a baseline for all Native American tribes.

They were the Vikings of the Southern Plains. They kicked the shit out of the other tribes and kept the Europeans out their territory. Hell, they defeated the Apache and took their territory. The French couldn't expand west or the Spanish north because of the Comanche. Mexico and Texas would get raided regularly by them and pretty much every government's flag that flew over Texas failed to defeat the Comanche.

They had a very spartan society where they just hunted and waged war.

Yeah, the Comanche were the ultimate boogeyman of the west and not a true barometer for native Americans as a whole. Pretty much everything the white man did they did as well, but worse. That's not to say that there hasn't been a shift towards James Fennimore Cooper's "noble savage" in recent years, but only that the Comanches are a definite outlier. 

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45 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

 Pretty much everything the white man did they did as well, but worse.

And reflecting back on this sentence, it is a wonder why we wonder why immigrant communities tend to prefer to speak their native language instead of mastering the English language. 

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finished tonight. thought it was quite good. brutality and misery reminiscent of The Revenant. 

sigh. i don't know why Kitsch hasn't had more success. very good in this. his Koresh was fantastic. 

im kind of fascinated by mormons. i've read Under the Banner, The Mormon Murders, several documentaries. kind of the quintessential American story - persecution, violence, religious fanaticism, hypocrisy, etc. etc. the most American story, really. 

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8 hours ago, mchookem said:

finished tonight. thought it was quite good. brutality and misery reminiscent of The Revenant. 

sigh. i don't know why Kitsch hasn't had more success. very good in this. his Koresh was fantastic. 

im kind of fascinated by mormons. i've read Under the Banner, The Mormon Murders, several documentaries. kind of the quintessential American story - persecution, violence, religious fanaticism, hypocrisy, etc. etc. the most American story, really. 

the mormon murders is about the martin harris white salamander letter forgery in the 1980s and very much in the bottom 50 of the top 100 books on the brethren - good book - but not canon

under the banner is good - it's not busch natty light like the 2 books from the church - but it's not macallan's either

the 5 books i listed are the canon - start there - read them in that order - and then pm me when you're done

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well. the description of the first book is "A broad examination of early Mormon efforts to establish in Utah an independent, theocratic Kingdom of God. Those bold efforts resulted in struggles with national republican ideology, Mormon opponents within and outside of Utah, and the federal government" and it made my brain short-circuit.

200(15).gif.1d8e7c3966769aea93a44d22c7c608a5.gif

lol

 

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13 hours ago, mchookem said:

im kind of fascinated by mormons. i've read Under the Banner, The Mormon Murders, several documentaries. kind of the quintessential American story - persecution, violence, religious fanaticism, hypocrisy, etc. etc. the most American story, really. 

I guess if you would also consider Scientology the quintessential American story too. Both are outrageous cults and it’s unfathomable that either of them took hold in the last few centuries. 

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21 hours ago, F250 said:

You can't use the Comanche as a baseline for all Native American tribes.

They were the Vikings of the Southern Plains. They kicked the shit out of the other tribes and kept the Europeans out their territory. Hell, they defeated the Apache and took their territory. The French couldn't expand west or the Spanish north because of the Comanche. Mexico and Texas would get raided regularly by them and pretty much every government's flag that flew over Texas failed to defeat the Comanche.

They had a very spartan society where they just hunted and waged war.

Trix is part commanche. It comes out occasionally. It's terrifying.

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1 hour ago, Rex Kramer said:

I guess if you would also consider Scientology the quintessential American story too. Both are outrageous cults and it’s unfathomable that either of them took hold in the last few centuries. 

Scientologists would have done this shit if they could have gotten away with it.

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3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Scientologists would have done this shit if they could have gotten away with it.

Should’ve been formed 125 years before they were and they could have. It is really hard for me to determine which group has the nuttier origin story and early practices. People will emphatically say Scientology and I probably would agree. But a lot of that is based on the fact that mainstream Mormons (not FLDS) over the last 50 years or so have become a largely high-functioning and successful part of society and are genuinely good people. Their early history and the nuttiness of Joe Smith and Brigham Young is totally whitewashed. But LRH is still probably crazier. 

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On 1/11/2025 at 11:27 AM, A-Tex Devil said:

It’s super grim but I am enjoying it.  LDS has to hate it.  

On 1/13/2025 at 10:49 AM, lateshow said:

They deserve every bit of it. 

They are pissed.  This kind of stuff leaking into the mainstream really pokes a lot of holes in the history some of them have in their minds, or that they tell their kids, of their heroic ancestors, all the while said ancestors kept getting run out of towns/states because they were assholes, so of course they continued to be assholes in Utah.  It’s similar to the “the Civil war wasn’t about slavery” crowd when you point out that most of the Confederate states put out statements declaring they were seceding to protect slavery (Texas has among the worst of the declarations of secession).

This is probably the most high-profile take on the Massacre, and there’s already been a few Mormons out there doing the “it wasn’t as bad as they made it out to be”.  There’s been some recent books that made noise, but their audiences are pretty narrow,

On 1/14/2025 at 4:26 PM, DDD Dad said:

I'm not remotely a student of LDS history or the Utah War, but from what little I read on a Google search it doesn't seem like they strayed too far from reasonable dramatic license of some events that occurred (Mountain Meadows Massacre, e.g.).

I’m pretty aware of the Massacre, but very aware of the Huff and Fancher families and the wagon trains as a whole - I have a few ancestors amongst those families in Benton and Carroll counties in Arkansas, and some genealogy/background research I had published on them made its way into a book on the Massacre.

I’m a couple of episodes in, and gritting my teeth a bit over some of the errors (most of which were already mentioned). I am trying to just roll with it, but I keep wondering why they didn’t get some things right, that would not have distracted from the story and would not have cost extra, but Hollywood is gonna Hollywood.  There was no need to make up some of the stuff, or compress some timelines, because the story, the characters, the land, would have been captivating enough.

My guess is the people behind the show felt the need to be edgy and/or were worried they’d lose their audience.  We won’t be getting any mini-series like Michener’s Centennial in the future, I’m guessing.

But I’ll reserve final judgement until I’ve finished it,

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14 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Their early history and the nuttiness of Joe Smith and Brigham Young is totally whitewashed. But LRH is still probably crazier. 

Smith and Young just wanted to have a lot of sex with a lot of women, and Smith ginned up the perfect religion to make it happen, and Young was happy to further it so he cloud also sleep with dozens of different women.

Season 3 Nbc GIF by The Office

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17 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Should’ve been formed 125 years before they were and they could have. It is really hard for me to determine which group has the nuttier origin story and early practices. People will emphatically say Scientology and I probably would agree. But a lot of that is based on the fact that mainstream Mormons (not FLDS) over the last 50 years or so have become a largely high-functioning and successful part of society and are genuinely good people. Their early history and the nuttiness of Joe Smith and Brigham Young is totally whitewashed. But LRH is still probably crazier. 

Both have nutty origin stories but, as krakauer pointed out in under the banner of heaven, what religion doesn't?  Imagine if someone in the last century with all "modern" documentation and newspaper records available tried to claim they were a married virgin impregnated by God?  

I'll say that I've worked with a few mainstream Mormons (i.e. not crazy polygamist cult offshoots) and they're easy as hell to work with.  They take care of their shit, just be sure you don't drop as many "fucks" into the conversations.  I've never met a scientologist that I know of, but every story I've ever seen makes them seem bat shit crazy.

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7 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Smith and Young just wanted to have a lot of sex with a lot of women, and Smith ginned up the perfect religion to make it happen, and Young was happy to further it so he cloud also sleep with dozens of different women.

Season 3 Nbc GIF by The Office

If I recall Mrs smith was all in on the concept of God relaying his wishes directly through her husband, until God suddenly took an interest in Joseph banging teenage girls.  Odd.

Which reminds me, in the movie it was creepy as fuck when Brigham was blessing the 2 girls and kissing their heads.

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6 minutes ago, Not a cat said:

I'll say that I've worked with a few mainstream Mormons (i.e. not crazy polygamist cult offshoots) and they're easy as hell to work with.  They take care of their shit, just be sure you don't drop as many "fucks" into the conversations.

I’ve worked with a lot over the years, and yeah, for the most part, easy to work with. I’ve even changed some views I had on them as well, but they still have their nutters who have to protect the church.  I’ve even stopped calling them Mormons to their faces.

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43 minutes ago, Hagbard Celine said:

@atomheartbevo let me know if you would like to see the cairns

I may be in Salt Lake City in March at a conference, and ti would be tempting, but I’m not sure yet if I’m going yet.

I have a cousin that has been out there and took some photos, but it would be interesting to see it in person.

I’m curious if you’ve dealt with the Descendants organization.  I was a member for a long time, but have not renewed in years.   There were some real characters in it - a lot of people who are members are not direct lineal descendants of anybody killed, but to hear them tell it, you’d think it was their grandma that was killed. Some of them are overzealous to the point where I felt that it hurts the organization and the main monument(s).

Back in the late 90s, there were some work being done on a monument and a bunch of bones were found during the work, and they were sent off to BYU, and a bunch of family members lost their shit, which I completely understand. I absolutely understand that.  The remains were then sent to an anthropologist at I think Utah State or the University of Utah. There was talk of trying to identify the remains through studies/DNA testing, and I remember some group offering up the finances to do it properly, and the family members/organization opposed it and wanted them back in the ground after the minimum worked needed to satisfy state laws (basically determine they weren’t recent victims of crime).  I remember a bunch of “they’ve suffered enough, let’s get them back in the ground where they can be at peace” (more like pieces jumbled together) nonsense.

The whole thing weirded me out, especially as a lot of the people pushing to rebury them ASAP did not seem to be direct descendants. They had the chance to potentially properly identify the victims and give them their own burial plots or at least their own boxes, but nope, if recall right it was about getting them back in the ground. I could have understood if it was the LDS Church saying that because they wouldn’t like the sight of the skeletons of little kids being named, but it was the Descendants group. The state and the LDS Church Seemed open to trying to ID them.  And they have the information on living descendants and relatives, and they know the names of the victims and the ages, so it would not have been a situation like the DOD still identifying Pearl Harbor victims from large graves and trying to track down unknown relatives.  

 

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On 1/15/2025 at 10:07 PM, Elvis said:

I haven’t watched this but I will. 
 

To those that defend the natives and their culture, you might want to read Empire of the Summer moon (or listen, the audio book is excellent). 
 

Their ways and beliefs were truly savage. Like beating women to death with the woman’s own toddler’s corpse savage. Ever tried torture?  They make the Spaniards blush. 
 

 

As others have noted, that's painting with a pretty broad brush. There was no shortage of atrocities to go around in the 1800's American frontier. And in a strictly practical sense, which tribes held out the longest before succumbing to reservation life? I don't know for sure, but I'd bet the Apache, Comance and Sioux were some of the last "free" groups, and also some of the most violent. 

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On 1/14/2025 at 10:29 PM, Hagbard Celine said:

the first attack before dawn on the morning of 7 september 1857 resulted in 7 dead and 16 wounded

no bows and arrows were used in the initial attack - only rifled weapons

the attack and final massacre took 5 days, not 5 minutes

PLEASE read this wiki on the baker-fancher party, which had to be created as a separate accounting of the factual, documented and cited history, distinct from the church-controlled primary page named "mountain meadows massacre"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker–Fancher_party

+++

During the early morning hours of Monday, September 7,[39] the Baker–Fancher party was attacked, at their Mountain Meadows camp, by as many or more than 200 fighters – Mormon militiamen disguised as Native Americans, and according to some accounts including Paiutes,[40] but this was refuted by some of the survivors.

The attackers were positioned in a small ravine southeast of the emigrant camp.[12]: 158 As the attackers shot into the camp, the Baker–Fancher party defended itself by encircling and lowering their wagons, along with digging shallow trenches and throwing dirt both below and into the wagons. Seven emigrants were killed during this opening attack and were buried somewhere within the wagon encirclement; sixteen more were wounded. The attack continued for five days, during which the besieged families had little or no access to fresh water and their ammunition was depleted.[41]

On Friday, September 11, 1857, two Mormon militiamen approached the Baker–Fancher party wagons with a white flag and were soon followed by Indian agent and militia officer John D. Lee. Lee told the battle-weary emigrants that he had negotiated a truce with the Paiutes, whereby they could be escorted safely the 36 miles back to Cedar City under Mormon protection in exchange for turning all of their livestock and supplies over to the Native Americans.[42] Accepting this, the emigrants were led out of their fortification. When a signal was given, the Mormon militiamen turned and murdered the male members of the Baker–Fancher party standing by their side. According to Mormon sources, the militia let a group of Paiute Indians execute the women and children. Some children were killed while in their mothers' arms or after being crushed by the butts of rifles or boot heels. The bodies of the dead were gathered and looted for valuables, and were then left in shallow graves or on the open ground. Members of the Mormon militia were sworn to secrecy. A plan was set to blame the massacre on the Indians. The militia did not kill 17 small children who were deemed too young to relate the story. These children were taken in by local Mormon families. The children were later reclaimed by the U.S. Army and returned to relatives, and there is legend that one girl was not returned and lived out her life among the Mormons.[43]

Fucking yikes.

That’s some real American Primeval… Christ.

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21 hours ago, Not a cat said:

Imagine if someone in the last century with all "modern" documentation and newspaper records available tried to claim they were a married virgin impregnated by God? 

Mary didn’t proclaim this stuff about herself. It was written about her. Joe Smith claimed this shit happened to him, just 200 years ago. That is a massive difference. The Book of Mormon is laughable. From Wiki; the only thing missing from Smith’s gospel is ancient wormholes to transport Jews to the New World 2600 years ago:

According to Joseph Smith, in 1823, when he was seventeen years old, an angel of God named Moroniappeared to him and said that a collection of ancient writings was buried in a nearby hill in present-day Wayne County, New York, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets.[17][18] The writings were said to describe a people whom God had led from Jerusalem to the Western hemisphere 600 years before Jesus's birth.[14] Smith said this vision occurred on the evening of September 21, 1823, and that on the following day, via divine guidance, he located the burial location of the plates on this hill and was instructed by Moroni to meet him at the same hill on September 22 of the following year to receive further instructions, which repeated annually for the next three years.[19][20]Smith told his entire immediate family about this angelic encounter by the next night, and his brother William reported that the family "believed all he [Joseph Smith] said" about the angel and plates.

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13 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

Mary didn’t proclaim this stuff about herself. It was written about her. Joe Smith claimed this shit happened to him, just 200 years ago. That is a massive difference. The Book of Mormon is laughable. From Wiki; the only thing missing from Smith’s gospel is ancient wormholes to transport Jews to the New World 2600 years ago:

According to Joseph Smith, in 1823, when he was seventeen years old, an angel of God named Moroniappeared to him and said that a collection of ancient writings was buried in a nearby hill in present-day Wayne County, New York, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets.[17][18] The writings were said to describe a people whom God had led from Jerusalem to the Western hemisphere 600 years before Jesus's birth.[14] Smith said this vision occurred on the evening of September 21, 1823, and that on the following day, via divine guidance, he located the burial location of the plates on this hill and was instructed by Moroni to meet him at the same hill on September 22 of the following year to receive further instructions, which repeated annually for the next three years.[19][20]Smith told his entire immediate family about this angelic encounter by the next night, and his brother William reported that the family "believed all he [Joseph Smith] said" about the angel and plates.

I had a very similar experience but I kept that shit to myself and have been living off the gold I melted down ever since.

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40 minutes ago, Rex Kramer said:

According to Joseph Smith, in 1823, when he was seventeen years old, an angel of God named Moroniappeared to him and said that a collection of ancient writings was buried in a nearby hill in present-day Wayne County, New York, engraved on golden plates by ancient prophets.[17][18] The writings were said to describe a people whom God had led from Jerusalem to the Western hemisphere 600 years before Jesus's birth.[14] Smith said this vision occurred on the evening of September 21, 1823, and that on the following day, via divine guidance, he located the burial location of the plates on this hill and was instructed by Moroni to meet him at the same hill on September 22 of the following year to receive further instructions, which repeated annually for the next three years.[19][20]Smith told his entire immediate family about this angelic encounter by the next night, and his brother William reported that the family "believed all he [Joseph Smith] said" about the angel and plates.

those were not the original dates or the original story - the wiki is controlled by the church

fawn brodie, the niece of a member of the first presidency, published her biography of joe smith in 1945 and it remains in a class by itself

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Man_Knows_My_History

https://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/dp/0679730540/ref=asc_df_0679730540?mcid=223550b36398320b8fdfd54662d9f522&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=693341079312&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15381705954594875345&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9198580&hvtargid=pla-448843869286&psc=1

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On 1/18/2025 at 10:51 PM, Not a cat said:

Both have nutty origin stories but, as krakauer pointed out in under the banner of heaven, what religion doesn't?  Imagine if someone in the last century with all "modern" documentation and newspaper records available tried to claim they were a married virgin impregnated by God?  

I'll say that I've worked with a few mainstream Mormons (i.e. not crazy polygamist cult offshoots) and they're easy as hell to work with.  They take care of their shit, just be sure you don't drop as many "fucks" into the conversations.  I've never met a scientologist that I know of, but every story I've ever seen makes them seem bat shit crazy.

no group is free from original sin if that is the M.O.. even buddhists were involved in warfare.

afaik in my (limited) exposure, today mormons are some of the best people.

miscellany i learned:

-steve young, the 49ers qb, is a descendant of brigham young

-"comancheros" is not a plural term for the comanches, but rather a distinct group. 

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