My New Job ContinuedI've become a bit more talkative at work, but I do a lot of smiling and nodding when people talk to me because I still worry about getting in trouble. "Thank God for Starbucks, right Christopher?" Jill said one morning. I smiled and nodded. I've never touched a drop of coffee, but if she likes that sort of thing then that's the sort of thing she likes, so good for her. One day she just said "Right Christopher?" and I smiled and nodded despite having no clue what she had said just prior, if anything. She announced, "Christopher is going to be a wonderful husband someday. He just agrees with everything I say." I smiled and nodded again, thinking, Is that a proposal? I think I should at least meet your kids first. On my other side, Carl replied, "And then there's me. 'Bite me.'" At work on Friday, someone was making the last call that we needed for our quota on a certain project and so everyone else on that project just sat there and waited. A couple of ladies next to me started talking to each other and found out that they both have fifteen year old sons with Asperger's. This was slightly shocking since I thought they were both just a few years older than me. Anyway, they were engrossed in that so I didn't butt in, but then the call was suspended partway through and we had to get to dialing again, and then someone else started what would hopefully be the last call for real this time, and I told them that I have Asperger's too. One of them was like, "Ah, I thought maybe. You remind me of my son." The other one was like, "I never would have guessed!" But they both said that this revelation gave them hope for their sons' futures. I decided not to ruin the moment by mentioning that my life has only recently ceased to be a train wreck and that I still have fewer romantic prospects than Jon Arbuckle. I decided to just be like So, I really want to give them advice and help them out and stuff, but I don't feel that I'm qualified to do so because I have no right to assume that my experience is the same as those of their sons. This is exactly why, as I said last week, I don't want to become a spokesperson for Asperger's. Their sons are in different situations anyway, as one of them is smart but failing school because he hates it while the other is in special ed because he has the mind of a five year old. He has a lot of other stuff wrong with him too. Mental illness often travels in packs. Depression, in particular, more often than not comes as a free bonus along with virtually any other disorder, because why not? But anyway, that was just a cool experience which is why I'm mentioning it here. Mackenzie the FeministMackenzie agreed to come to my institute class with me, and unlike everyone else who ever agrees to do something with me, didn't cancel immediately prior to it. When she texted me half an hour before I was like Ah, that will be Mackenzie canceling on me, but she was just offering to pick me up, probably because it was raining. She's super feminist so, as a cruel joke, I held my coat up over her head to keep the rain off her as we were heading to the building. She was like "No, no, I'm fine" and ran away. I always feel like I'm walking on pins and needles to not say or do anything that will accidentally be offensive to my feminist friends, but I relaxed around her after I realized how much fun it is whenever we clash, either verbally or in sporting events. Afterward as she drove us home and we were talking and she fell silent I mused, "I've realized that I don't need to worry about your silences anymore, because I used to think it meant you didn't like what I'd said, but now I know that if you don't like what I've said, you'll tell me." "Yep," she said. "You're very outspoken." "I don't like that word," she said, her voice rising. "It means someone is like, speaking out of turn, and I feel like it's mostly used on girls, and -" "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that, I just meant you speak your mind instead of being silent -" "I know, but it has connotations of speaking out of turn -" "I meant it as a compliment, I'm sorry -" "You don't need to apologize for everything." "But you just flipped out on me." Milo's Grand Adventure"Milo's Grand Adventure" is the working title of my book about aliens invading in the fourteenth century. It probably shouldn't be the final title because Milo has sort of been demoted to a supporting character and it doesn't really fit the tone. Milo is a dragon, named after my dog and lifted from a picture that my classmate drew for me in fifth grade in exchange for a McDonald's Galidor toy piece that I found on the playground. I wish I could find that picture now. When I first started thinking of fantasy adventures about this dragon and some other characters, it was all very cliché stuff about a magical land overrun by a villain and the heroes going on an epic quest to defeat him. When I started writing it down circa seventh or eighth grade, it was part of my awful attempts to mimic Douglas Adams' writing style, so if it had been comprehensible it would have been a very goofy and lighthearted tone. Things have changed since I decided to set the story in a real time and place and bring aliens into it. It's more dark and serious now than either its earlier incarnations or my current only finished novel, "Space Girls" (also a working title), which could even be considered a comedy except that I don't dare because to me that implies making a value judgment that my own work is funny. "Space Girls" attempts to address some deep messages and serious topics but keeps them low-key so as not to be pretentious. "Milo's Grand Adventure", for whatever reason, is turning out to be more serious, and I guess I just have to deal with that. It explores questions that I became curious about, such as "What was it like to be a lesbian in the Middle Ages?"* "What was it like to become an agnostic in the Middle Ages?"** "What was it like to have chronic depression in the Middle Ages?"*** "Did women shave their legs in the Middle Ages?"**** And Milo is no longer so much a wisecracking comic relief character as a deadpan, apathetic chaotic neutral character. *Because obviously LGBT people have always existed, but the vocabulary and concepts have evolved drastically and mostly just within the past couple centuries, so I'm curious about how that affected people's perceptions of reality. How would a person that today we would consider "lesbian" feel in an era when the concept of "being a lesbian" simply didn't exist, and even saying "I like women" would have been beyond anyone's comprehension including her own? **Did agnostics and atheists just keep their doubts to themselves so they wouldn't get burned at the stake, or did they not even exist? It has been said that Darwin made it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist", meaning that previously there wasn't much of a rational basis for denying the existence of God because you couldn't explain the existence of anything without it. I'd be surprised if no one who lived through the Great Mortality (as they called the Black Death) started to question God's benevolence, though. ***Well, you'd have better kept that to yourself too, because the medical diagnosis was "demon" and the treatment was to incarcerate, beat, and/or starve the depressed person to drive it out. Learning this confirmed how much I hate humanity. ****No. A lot of movies are highly inaccurate on this point. My movie adaptation will not be. I was actually just curious about this one because I reasoned that a woman being raised from infancy by a dragon to be an amoral killing machine probably wouldn't bother to shave her legs, but I didn't know if that would set her apart from normal women of the time or not. "Space Girls", currently weighing in around 460 pages, is much too long for a first-time author to get published. "Milo's Grand Adventure" will be much shorter and my hope is to get it published first and help pave the way toward that end. But if it becomes super popular and then I publish "Space Girls", people might be confused and angered by the huge shift in tone. I suppose that's a risk I'll just have to take. Modern Romance
Chapter 3 - Online dating has its ups and downs but ideally should just be a first step and at some point lead to getting off the internet. Chapter 4 - People are almost paralyzed by the wealth of options they have these days, and afraid to commit to someone when someone else they like more could be just around the corner. Chapter 5 - Japan is doomed because no one wants to reproduce, while Argentina is a haven for misogyny, but what they have in common is they're both full of perverts. Chapter 6 - Your statistical odds of finding a partner who will never cheat on you are pretty abysmal. In France, people are okay with that. Chapter 7 - Passionate love fades after twelve to eighteen months and is then hopefully replaced by companionate love, which isn't as great, but reaps far more over a lifetime. Conclusion - I'm a comedian, but that doesn't mean I can't be thoughtful and introspective. After reading this, I agreed with the author's conviction that all this modern technology is no more inherently bad or disruptive than the telephone or the television or anything else. Although the games that people play with dating are stupid, there's nothing wrong with bringing texting and stuff into it. Texting is not the problem. People are the problem. The Mormon Section(Continued from "Modern Romance") In any case, we all ought to remember that dating is not a holy and immutable eternal principle, but a rather recent invention and a means to an end. There's no reason to pretend the means shouldn't be allowed to evolve. I'm 99% percent positive that Jesus never went on a date. Mary Magdalene: So, Jesus of Nazareth asked me out. Martha: Oh, wow, what did you say? Mary Magdalene: I said I was busy. He seems nice and everything, but he's just so plain-looking. Besides, I'm not really into carpenters. I want to marry someone with a future. Martha: Yeah. Well, I'm going out with Judas Iscariot again tomorrow. Mary Magdalene: You have all the luck. (No sacrilege intended. Please don't stone me.) This topic was also addressed somewhat in an "Adventures in Odyssey" episode where Connie and Eugene went back in time to see baby Jesus. Connie: I'm afraid that Roman centurion is going to ask me on a date! Eugene: Don't be silly. They didn't go on 'dates' in first century Palestine. Connie: Oh, thank goodness. Eugene: However, he might offer to buy you from me. Boots Walker - They're HereToday: a continuation of the alien invasion theme started last week, with this novelty single from 1967.
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My New Job ContinuedI really don't have anything to write and don't feel like posting anything, and I feel like it's really going to suck if I force myself to anyway, but this falls one day short of the one year mark since I left that horrible company Webs and reopened my site at this new location, so I can't give up now. Let's see... I wrote a song about my new job. Since I can no sooner come up with an original melody than a new color, and can't read or write music anyway, it's a parody, albeit much shorter than the original: Do you wanna take a survey? Okay, bye. It actually got quite a bit better this week as I spent most of the time on a much better project. We get switched around occasionally and I don't know what factors into that. But this project was/is much better because I only have to call businesses that are already part of this umbrella organization and ask about how satisfied they are with it etcetera, and most of them are very cooperative and the only major difficulty is getting ahold of the respondents in the first place when they're so busy and we don't have a message to leave. I got between six and eleven completes a day instead of between zero and one. Of course I'm still hoping to get switched to the other position soon and transcribe incoming calls instead, but I have to get training and the manager has to get approval for the training. They said during the first week that it would be a week or two so it better happen next week. I also spent some time on a project that's moderately better than the first but still sucks. After one call the girl next to me said, "That was very Christian of you." She turned to the girl on her other side and continued, "I love it when you call churches and they're just like super rude." The other girl agreed. "'We don't take those kinds of calls,'" she mimicked. "God takes every call." Then I looked over and gave her the "I know that comment wasn't directed at me but I heard it and I want you to know I found it funny too" smile. Little moments of camaraderie like that are the second best part of the job, with the first of course being that I get paid. Not a lot by the world's standards, but by my standards I may as well be a millionaire now, and I'm thrilled. Writing and AutismI really want to get the files off my old laptop soon because I have writing projects on there that I want to get back to. Non-fiction: Running Logan Canyon (commissioned by Paul Cracroft of Square One Printing) Novel: Milo's Grand Adventure (working title) Short Story: Forever a Clone Rejected Screenplay Adaptation: Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars It wasn't urgent because I usually lose interest in projects for months at a time, which is why I hardly ever finish anything. But a week or so ago I was listening to the "Destroy All Humans" soundtrack, and the sting in one of the songs did a really good job of being evocative of an alien invasion and made me want to make something along those lines, and then I remembered I had already been doing that with "Milo's Grand Adventure". The unique and hopefully awesome twist I was putting on it was that it takes place in the fourteenth century and also involves dragons. I posted the prologue here a little less than a year ago, but re-reading it now I think it's awful and needs to be drastically overhauled, which is a good thing because that means I've improved a lot. The classes I've taken and the books I've read are probably the biggest part of that. And on top of that one of my professors from last semester is encouraging me to consider expanding an autobiographical essay I wrote into a full-length memoir, something I had never considered in my life but am now intrigued by. The essay is called "Ass Burgers" because that's what young me thought Dr. Iqbal said I seemed to have. Young me was offended. In my mind, this was and is simply the only title that works. If I were to write this memoir and give it the same title and publish it, that would probably protect me from ever getting called as a General Authority even in the unlikely event that my first defense of never getting married somehow fails. My only hesitation in doing this is that I don't want to become a spokesperson for Asperger's or autism and convey the impression that my experience is representative of anyone else's, particularly when so many other things are also wrong with me that I don't always know what to blame on what. Still, becoming such a spokesperson would provide a wealth of opportunities to lambast the anti-vaxxer movement, so that's tempting. Speaking of last semester, Temple Grandin came to speak and she mentioned something about autistic people being bad at algebra but just fine with other kinds of math. I had never heard it before but it made perfect sense, seeing as Algebra was basically the worst class I ever took and the first one I ever failed, whereas Statistics this last semester was so easy that I spent about two minutes a week studying, if that, and ended up with a 101%. And speaking of Temple Grandin, I just recently watched the HBO movie about her and it made me cry for multiple reasons. It was just really, really good and I think that if everyone were required to watch it there would be a lot fewer ignorant and judgmental creeps in the world. This, I think, was my favorite part: Mother: Temple, look at me. Look at me. Do you know how people tell each other things with their eyes? This is me telling you that I love you and I respect you. Temple: [long tearful pause] I will never learn how to do that. Mother: I know. -_-I stumbled upon this in a creationist group where intelligence goes to die. You can't make this stuff up. Sadly, it doesn't even rank among the thousand stupidest things that creationists on the internet have said. At least it's coherent. And in fairness, at least this guy has the intellectual honesty to be consistent in requiring all of modern science to conform with ancient Hebrew texts. The Mormon SectionLately, as often, I've been annoyed by Mormons who defend their narrow and dogmatic view of the world by rejecting anything that doesn't fit into it with ad hominem accusations of bias against, say, the Salt Lake Tribune, or by simply saying they don't accept it and that's that. For example, in 2015 the LDS Church had its lowest rate of growth since 1937, and since some people's testimonies require the Church to be growing exponentially (which it hasn't been since 1990 or so) in order to be true, they just reject this fact and anyone mentioning it - even though the source is the Church's own published statistics plus basic math. It's just really embarrassing for me to be associated with that kind of people, but not as embarrassing as realizing I used to be that kind of person. I used to be a fan of knee-jerk denials too. Not coincidentally, most of this coincided with my brief stint as a creationist. It's not like my IQ changed between then and now, so I have to remind myself of that and remind myself that these people aren't just stupid and I should be more humble and stop looking down on them. My job title is "Agent", and they never explained why, but I figured out that it's because we're acting on behalf of other companies. Much of what we collect is confidential, so that literally makes me a secret agent. Anyway, on many of the surveys we just say who we're calling on behalf of and don't mention our own company's name at all, so that in effect we've become an extension of them. Therefore our behavior reflects on them and we have to avoid being rude or unprofessional over the phone regardless of how rude or unprofessional the respondents are to us first. This, then, reminds me of how God has made us agents unto ourselves and given us the agency to do what we will, and when we give Him our agency and take upon ourselves the name of Christ, our behavior and speech reflect on Him and His organization. Christ is the perfect example of this, as He speaks as an agent for the Father without the slightest variation from the latter's will, so that they are completely united as one. Now since I talked about Tyler Glenn and his angry music video a couple weeks ago, I ought to put in a plug for the heartwarming responses from his mother and rapper James the Mormon, which basically demonstrate exactly how people should be responding. And as far as I can tell, to my pleased surprise, it's how most members are. Kelis & Timo Maas - Help MeThis is the song I was referring to from the "Destroy All Humans!" soundtrack. It sounds so delightfully creepy. Here's how I was originally going to open this post: Long-time readers may have noticed that this post is coming a day earlier than usual. Really long-time readers may have noticed that back in the day there was, in fact, no set schedule, and that such a schedule was necessitated by my increased busy-ness shortly after last semester started. This subversion of the schedule has in turn been necessitated by me working from ten to six tomorrow and not being able to access a computer after that hour. Normally I won't have to work on Saturdays but I had to miss some hours for my finals and I'm supposed to make them up. So I'll be calling verbally abusive normal people instead of passive aggressive businesspeople, but that will be compensated for by getting to work on a different project for a while. This current project is basically the hardest and worst one because no one wants to cooperate, and I made the mistake of performing too well for a new guy and getting left on it. When more people were put on it, part of me thought "You poor souls" but another part of me thought "Yay, now I'm less alone in my misery!" But there's no need to open this post like that anymore because that shift isn't currently busy enough for me to do anything, so I got the day off and it still counts as having made up my missed shift. I'm not sure if that means I'm still getting paid, but I'm so happy I don't even care. Now here is how I was going to continue this post: The environment definitely takes some getting used to, as it's far more structured than my old job, where sometimes even the boss would stop me just to chat about casual stuff for fifteen minutes. I didn't even have a set schedule, and just came in whenever I wanted and worked for however long I wanted. It was quite chill. This company bills other companies by the hour, so it has very strict rules, for example, about how many breaks one can take, and when, and for how long, and the secretary has to be notified about them. I think once I'm acclimated to that, and move on to a better project, things will be better. I may also get transferred to a different position because I can type ninety plus words a minute. I usually don't, with this blog or with my novel or anything, because my brain doesn't even work that fast. But this would just be copying what other people say. Fingers crossed. Last week I compared job searching to dating, which was not meant as a compliment to either of them, but I ought to have mentioned in fairness that there are at least a few key differences. For example, in job searching it is usually illegal to discriminate based on disabilities. For that reason I considered listing autism on my resume, in case it prompted potential employers to worry about being sued if they rejected me for not having interpersonal skills. Fortunately that wasn't necessary this time. In dating, by contrast, people make no attempt to hide their discrimination against disabled people, especially blind people. I hear it all the time; some girl says "I hate blind dates" and all the other girls agree with her. This job is also similar to dating, actually, not just in vague terms of rejection and futility but in many of the actual words used. "I'm not interested." "I'm too busy." "Take me off your list." And so on. The difference is that in the job we're supposed to persist whenever possible and it isn't considered harassment. Not by us, anyway. There were a few highlights though - Having donuts in the break room on Thursday and commiserating with a couple coworkers. One offered this philosophy for dealing with the current project: "I just try not to complain even though it sucks beyond belief." The coworker who, when next to me, occasionally comments to me between calls, and I just smile back because I'm afraid of getting in trouble. When Jill [pseudonym] muttered a barrage of profanity as soon as she got off the phone. The Walt Disney receptionist who told me to "Have a magical day!" The State Farm receptionist who was so absurdly friendly that I regret not getting her name and telling her supervisor she deserves a raise. When Jill happily sang "I can't wait to go on vacation" as soon as she got off the phone. The female receptionist named Tyler. From 1993 to 2015 I never met a female named Tyler, and now in the first half of 2016 I've met two. I thought the first one just had "creative" parents. I realized that if I made a paradigm shift and pretended it was my job to annoy people, I would become satisfied when they were rude to me instead of feeling sad. It worked. When Jill flipped out as soon as she got off the phone: "People act like I'm stalking them when I ask for their name for verification. I'm not gonna keep calling you. I'm not gonna come to your house. I'm not gonna take you for a long walk on the beach." On the one survey that I completed one day, the lady said she needed to get back to work and I was doing my best to hurry along. So as soon as we completed the last question I was about to tell her we had completed the last question, but before I could she said with palpable happiness, "Now ask us how many years we've been in business." And I asked, "How many years have you been in business?" And she said, "Thirty-seven years!" And I said, sincerely, "Wow, congratulations, I hope you remain in business for many years to come!" And she said, "My daughter and my granddaughter work here with me." And then I had to steer us back on course and tell her the survey was over, but wow, that was a great human connection. "Thank you for calling Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum." Ohmygosh, it was like meeting my favorite comedian. When Jill took the Lord's name in vain while she was still on the phone, because a very close thunderclap startled her. GraduationUSU graduation was today and, for the first time in my five years here, I bothered to go because Bracelets was graduating. I wanted to see her for possibly the last time ever, but the occasion was pretty much ruined by the presence of her serial adulterer father. I met a guy once who I knew abused his wife and daughter, and my fantasies about rearranging his face with a crowbar ran into some cognitive dissonance when he turned out to be charming, witty, likable, and outwardly spiritual even. This time was not like that. The moment I looked at this man I felt that he was just a piece of scum through and through. The whole thing was just awkward, and I felt like the whole rest of the family was uncomfortable too and I felt really bad that Bracelets had this kind of a damper on her special day on top of all the other life-ruining crap from him. And I don't know what else to say about that but I just wanted to bring it up because it's weighing on my mind. Also at graduation, I noticed this girl who looked vaguely familiar and I was trying to figure out who she was, and when they announced her name I remembered that she made me a True Aggie my first week of college. I just showed up to True Aggie Night, now knowing anyone, and she was like "Did you go to Such-and-Such High School?" and I was like "No. Want to kiss me?" and she was like "Sure." What a strange, out of character fluke that was for my life. I was really curious whether she remembered me but I didn't know if her husband would appreciate me bringing it up. PoemSo, poetry has never really been my thing, and I'm actually less skilled than I used to be because I can no longer rhyme without supreme effort, but I've dabbled in it a bit and I took a class on it last semester and I threw this "masterpiece" together in about two minutes after it was inspired by real-life events. Through the magic of double standards, this poem is charming if its subject likes me and creepy if she doesn't. In other words, it's creepy. But I'm not gonna keep calling her. I'm not gonna come to her house. I'm not gonna take her for a long walk on the beach. That dress she's wearing now, that floor-length blue dress with the pink roses – That's the dress she was wearing when I first saw her. That's the dress she was wearing when I thought, "Wow, she’s beautiful." That's the dress she was wearing when her eyes caught mine like tractor beams and refused to let go. That's the dress she was wearing when she revealed herself to be one of the most interesting people I've ever talked to. That's the dress she was wearing when I couldn't believe something was going well for a change, and figured I should quit while I was ahead. That's the dress she was wearing when she said "Got to go" and left me to think about her all night. Now she's wearing it again. "That’s a very pretty dress," I say. "Thanks," she says, beaming. "I like your tie." The Mormon SectionAs I was wondering whether getting this job was a catastrophic mistake or I just needed to persevere and rise to the challenge, I sought the Lord's will. And the Lord was like, "I have confidence in you to make your own decisions regarding jobs and career paths to do what you want with your life." And I was like, "You have confidence in me? Have you seen me try to do stuff? Maybe you have me confused with Christopher Robert Nicholson. He's married and black and lives in a different part of Utah." Of course that was somewhat facetious but yes, my faith is weak. I believe in God but I often don't believe Him. I feel as though He has made a grave error in judgment by placing this confidence in me. That's the thing, isn't it, that sometimes God really doesn't care what you do. Another reason why the notion that He has every minute detail of your life planned out is absurd. But the primary reason I wanted His assistance in making this decision was because I don't have foreknowledge. I may be able to evaluate the pros and cons of any particular choice, but there are so many things I can't even guess at. I don't know who I would meet or what experiences I would have at any particular job that could send my life in wildly divergent directions. Apparently that doesn't matter, though, at least in my case. So that's cool, I guess. F-777 - Dance of the ViolinsI discovered this and liked it. While in the realm of non-sleep, non-wakingness, in between the phone voices in my head, it played occasionally. The part I hate most about job searching is its large dependance upon shallow, arbitrary, intrinsically worthless social cues and nuances. It's like dating in that regard, except that if I refuse to participate I'll starve to death. Fortunately it's over now as I got very lucky/blessed. Somehow, immediately following an interview that I felt went only moderately well, I was asked to come in for a six hour training the next day, and I did that, and now I start on Monday, so yay for that. The most awkward part of the interview was when she asked, "What makes you the best candidate for this job?" For a moment I just stared at her, as I realized that I was being asked to explain why I'm better than other people, and that I could only get this job at their expense, and they they also have bills to pay and maybe children who need clothes. I also knew that in all honesty I'm not the best candidate for this or any other conceivable thing ever. But part of this horrible game is shameless boasting and self-aggrandizement. The answer I gave was "Because of my Stats class" but in hindsight I should have said "Because I have a ton of experience with rejection and verbal abuse." The training ended an hour early, but I missed two socializing opportunities because of it, which was disappointing until I realized a month ago that wouldn't have been an issue. I also made sure to get onto the day shift so that my evenings would be open for socializing, and if I had said that a month ago it would have been pure sarcasm. I can't really take any credit for the change, though, because I just happened to find this perfect posse and if I hadn't I still wouldn't be doing any of that stuff. Last week I went on a hike with their Elders' quorum, demonstrating that while infatuation may have brought me into this ward, and food may have enticed me to continue coming, ultimately it's friendship that will keep me there. I've discovered what's really important - having lots of people who like me enough to cooperate as I exploit them to further my aspirations. The hike was preceded by a breakfast, during which their bishop said a few words about dating. He wasn't like the second counselor, who constantly badgers everyone about dating and marriage, which I actually think is all right. If the entire bishopric and the entire culture were like that, it would be a problem, but I think it's all well and good for one person to fill that role because it creates a "good cop/bad cop" kind of dichotomy. Anyway, the bishop doesn't go on about it that much but he just wanted to talk about it on this occasion, and that was great for me as an outsider because I could glean his remarks for good counsel without any obligation to actually listen to it. "A few of you - maybe more than a few of you - are just scared of women," he said, "and you just need to get over that." Well, yes, I thought, I do tend to be scared of things that hurt me. I'm funny that way. I also played basketball with them. I'm not familiar with all of the rules, and I can't shoot very well, but I'm not so bad at it that my team is guaranteed to lose by a large margin, so that was fun. I just tried to stay out of the way and do whatever my teammates told me to. "Chris, guard Dallin!" somebody said. Sure thing, I thought, as soon as I figure out which one he is. I tried to pick up on some of their slang as well. They were fond of saying "Good D!", and they even said it to me a few times. I assume the "D" stands for "defense", though I'm not sure because they never said "Good O!" as an corollary and I don't see why "defense" is a long enough word to require an abbreviation anyway. If it were "disestablishmentarianism", that would be different. I learned in high school that trying to be normal by copying what all the other guys said and did was a bad idea, so I never said it myself. I would have gotten the context completely wrong and they would have scoffed at me like, "Are you blind? That was the worst D I've ever seen in the history of D. My grandmother could D better than that, and she's D-E-D dead." I need to wrap this up pretty quick now because I have a lot of Latin studying to do and maybe more people will read it if it's shorter than usual anyway. I shan't get around to talking about Mackenzie's obsession with T. Swizzle, how she dances to it while driving despite claiming to not know how to dance, how I realized last night that I argue with her just for fun even when she's right and maybe that's why she thought I didn't like her, etcetera. That's all the pertinent information anyway. I'm not good at putting those things in story form when they really work better as bullet points. The Mormon Section The other day Tyler Glenn, lead singer of Neon Trees, released a solo song and video called "Trash" that angrily slams the Church, which he turns out to have left months ago over its now infamous policy change. After listening to a few seconds of it and being unable to bear any more, I have to say that I think the title is pretty descriptive of how it sounds. As for the actual content, though, I can't help but think "Wow, this is cool." Don't get me wrong. I know Tyler Glenn is coming from a place of deep and legitimate pain, and I don't think that's cool. I don't think it's cool that he's trashing my religion either, although I feel not one iota of anger or resentment for it and I don't think anyone else should either. No, the cool part is having this kind of publicity and repercussions in the first place, for good or bad. When ex-Mormons rant on their reddit forums or article comments sections, does anyone else care? No. (Insert your own quip about the same applying to my blog. I won't argue.) But this is in Rolling Stone. Wow. But the absolute coolest part is that he spits on an altered painting of Joseph Smith, that he is not just slamming the Church in general, or President Monson, but going way back to the founder, Joseph Smith, who had nothing to do with this policy, but did say he was told by an angel "that my name should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds, and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people." This prophecy was given to a total nobody in an era when news could take a month to travel across the continent. Even by his death, when he had become moderately famous in the United States, there was no reason to assume anyone would remember or care about him a hundred or two years later. So I think that's cool. I know I should focus more on Tyler Glenn and the actual issues at hand here, but that's my perspective and I'm sticking to it. And of course I hope he gets over his pain. Nightwish - The EscapistWeeks ago I got through a rough time by listening to this over and over and over, but I didn't get around to putting it on my blog because stuff came up. That happens. |
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- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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