After every Conference, hundreds of children and the elderly - who failed to understand exactly which planter or lamppost "we'll all meet by" - are rounded up and sent as forced labor to Welfare Square.

I made that up, of course. The truth is that post-Conference strays are summarily shot by church security and then run through the Temple Ready program just to be safe.

Here, give my editor an earful at unchristlikeresponse@tribune.yell.

The morning press into the Conference Center is the gantlet Mormons run twice a year in order to get the gospel straight from our leaders' mouths - and to hear what a damnable bunch we are from the Insult for Jesus crowd.

Although it may seem like every Mormon in the entire world is trying to cram him- or herself into the Conference Center, most of us won't get anywhere near the place.

The Conference Center is huge. You could hold blimp races in it. But it still isn't big enough to hold all Mormons. It isn't even big enough to hold all the Mormons who show up.

Most Mormons will attend Conference in the spirit, which is to say electronically. Our attendance today and Sunday will be courtesy of the wonderful miracle of mass media technology, which we recognize as a vile polluter of the human soul the rest of the year.

A Mormon my entire life, I have attended General Conference in the flesh fewer than a dozen times - not because I don't think Conference is important, but because for much of my life, I didn't live anywhere near Utah.

During that time, I got Conferenced via word of mouth, church magazines, radio and TV. These contain all of the rich Conferency goodness without any of the mood-altering scramble for parking.

After we moved to Utah, I caught the real thing a few times. It was nice, including the April Conference I got stung by a bee because the Tabernacle was full and I had to sit outside. But I went back to televised Conference.

The nice thing about televised Conference is I can argue with the speakers and not have to worry about getting dragged off by security.

I also prefer hearing "we are living in the last days" with my arm around a bag of Doritos. I don't like hearing it with someone else's breath on the back of my neck and the nagging suspicion that my car is being towed.

If you're going to Conference Sunday, you can have my spot. I'll watch for you on television. Don't forget to wave.

rkirby@sltrib.com