And I bet Elder Bennett was really grateful that he and his wife sold that ring all those years ago, when they were struggling students, so that they could lug cans of wheat with them everywhere they moved. The wheat must have come in so handy, when they were struggling years later, or after that apocalypse that happened their Senior year.
The Ensign article that Paternoster refers to notes that the young couple held up as an example of the right and mormon way to do things, that young couple got used to dragging buckets of wheat etc. from apartment to apartment, from house to house.
So, we get a very clear picture of the hassles food storage caused, and of the meaningless labor and expense. But we get no clear picture of the supposed good that was supposed to come from indulging in meaningless activity.
satirical advice of swapping internet service for food storage sounds less crazy than the actual advice given by Elder Bennett (swapping an engagement ring for food storage).
It's not easy satirizing that which is already so ridiculous.
About 5 years ago my TBM sister told me to stop reading the Ensign. She told me it would damage my testimony. I remember thinking that was crazy. Apparently she knows what she's talking about.
A relative of mine had an experience of having something published in the Ensign. The staff there just took what this person had written and made changes to it without getting permission for the edits and without even notifying her. The relative told me of someone else they knew who had a similar experience. In that case, the staff changed details in a way that made part of the story untrue.
Prior to learning about this practice, I had long suspected that they just made up some of the stories, especially the "name withheld" ones. So when I found out about this, it confirmed what I already thought was happening.
So maybe Bennett made up the story to begin with, or maybe the editors took license with it. What is really hard to imagine, though, is how the Ensign editors couldn't see what a thoroughgoing stupid story it is, to the point where it almost didn't need satirization to appear on a satire blog.
President, if you are reading this, it seems to me that you will have a limitless source of material for as long as you want to keep doing your blog. And I hope that will be a long time.
The ensign articles are just so stupid that it is hard NOT to mock them.
Yes, wear a leather wedding "ring" and spend money on worthless food supplies that have to be carted around. And the end of times never even happened. What are profits for if they can't tell the future?
The article mentioned eating some of the food, but if they had put that money in a savings account they would have been better off than eating old cans of soup and grinding ancient wheat.