"church of mormon." I love that. What a stark illustration of how little Russell Nelson's legacy matters. At least this ad is honest about which church it's for; I saw one on Facebook where the sister missionaries just invited people to "a Christian study group" or some crap like that. I will now answer the possibly rhetorical questions.

"How is a church okay with this kind of marketing?"

My dude, this is not even in the bottom fifty least ethical things the LDS Church has ever done. Its leaders believe that anything to further the church's goals or protects its reputation is justified, including but not limited to straight-up lying and breaking the law.

"Men cannot actually be falling for this, can they?"

My dude, have you seen how lonely men behave? I mean, have you? Here's a hilarious and immensely satisfying story about "Brooke America" catfishing a MAGAt for weeks to make him suffer for wishing death on a three-year-old brown girl. Of course, I don't expect that this strategy will be successful enough to reverse the LDS Church's declining growth rate, but it will work sometimes, and some lonely men will get baptized and remain lonely because the missionaries can't date them and there aren't enough women in the church.

My adblocker on YouTube keeps me from seeing these ads, fortunately. It didn't keep me from crossing paths with them in person. Fortunately, I'm not lonely enough to rejoin a high-demand religion that protects child abusers. I have reached the definitive conclusion that Mormonism is not true or good, I am not questioning, and I am not open to going back. Some Mormons would say that makes me close-minded, and I would ask them why they aren't open to joining Scientology. But I thought I had a nice opportunity to plant a seed by showing these missionaries that apostates aren't all nasty people. I try to only be nasty to those who deserve it.

I held back so much out of my desire to be respectful and not damage their faith. The white girl asked if I have faith in Jesus Christ, and I said no, I believe he's a mythologized version of a historical figure that represents the best of humanity, but I didn't go on to point out historical claims in the New Testament that don't hold up under scrutiny or explain that his divinity evolved through the Gospels in the order they were written. She asked if they could come over and share a message about Jesus Christ, and I said if they wanted to, but I didn't want them to waste their time because I wasn't really interested in coming back. I threw in the "really" just to be nice, when "at all" would have been more accurate, but I thought I got the point across. I have the luxury of time to do things like that just to be nice to the missionaries. Theoretically, I could also take the opportunity to learn from them despite our differences in belief, but I'm sorry, I just don't see myself learning much from 18-21-year-olds trying to sell a religion that I know inside and out.

The white girl asked what gives me hope. I talked about near-death experiences and how wonderful they usually are, and I took that opportunity to explain that I base my beliefs on evidence and no longer believe that feelings are a reliable source of truth, which I hoped would preempt them from asking me to pray about things. She asked how I would feel if I knew that I had a loving heavenly father, which was a loaded and complex question that got glossed over as the conversation moved on. If God was a corporeal literal father like Mormonism teaches, I would want to know it, but I certainly don't have a strong emotional attachment to the concept, which she should have remembered is not new to me, or desire for it to be true. My current belief in God as the universal consciousness from which all reality springs and of which each of us is a tiny piece suits me just fine, thanks. There are several reasons why a supreme deity stuck in a physical human body doesn't make sense, and I also feel like he's a godawful father, and they just assert ipso facto that he's a perfect father in spite of all evidence to the contrary from their own scriptures. There's the whole business of his wife/wives being silenced, too.

The Polynesian girl said something about how we have freedom to choose one path or the other, and the way she said it sounded vaguely like a threat, but I let that slide. She got my number so they could invite me to activities. The friend who owns my house said I'm always welcome at activities, but so far he hasn't told me when any are, so yeah.

Two days later, they texted me to invite me to sacrament meeting. God damn it.

As soon as I saw it, I was like, yeaaah... I don't believe the kind of stuff she believes, and I shouldn't pretend I do just because I think she's hot, even though that's the most logical course of action. But that doesn't mean I should be entirely close-minded and think she can't teach me anything, right? On an unrelated note, when this guy learned my name, he asked how old I was, then explained that when he was in third grade, a psychotic classmate named Christopher stabbed him in the hand with a pencil and the lead broke off inside. I did stab a classmate with a pencil once, but we were older, I didn't stab him that hard, and it was because he was harassing a girl, and when he told the teacher, she laughed at him. True story.

Amber Lynn Patten's website didn't work. I looked around her socials, and I found another web address that didn't work and one that did, but then the link to schedule a magic consultation didn't work. I saw something about reading auras, which reminded me of my delusional pathological liar neighbor who told me she could read auras, but that's whatever. I found a Facebook post about me. It also has pictures of her sitting in a tree, which I won't reproduce here because I'm more conscientious about photographers' and artists' copyrights than I was in my early days of blogging. Here's her side of part of the story that I told about her:

She left out the part where she drugged me without my consent. Interesting. Jokes aside, since nothing bad happened to me, I decided it was hot that she did that, so maybe I'm a douche or something.

Anyway, I asked her about sermons because I thought she'd said she gave sermons, but in fairness, I was high at the time I thought she said that. I wasn't high when she said that she would give these "sermons" on the hill, which is very close to the gazebo by the pond but is not the same place. Also, I notice that in this post, she didn't say what time she'd be there. On the plus side, I guess she doesn't have the planning skills to be a cult leader.

"Skeptical but open-minded." Did you notice that phrase? I did, because I've used it to describe myself, and I didn't tell her that, so it's obviously a sign. No, but really. I'm skeptical because I don't believe in any of the magic stuff I read about on her pages, but I'm open-minded because I will believe in them if she gives me sufficient evidence. Not that I intend to challenge or argue with her, but I will ask and listen. I really don't care what people believe as long as they live by good values. Amber sells stuff, so maybe she's a grifter, but I'll reserve judgment on that point. I can imagine Mormons reading this and being all like "Yeah, bro, that's obvious priestcraft, and that's why women can't hold the priesthood" and then continuing to pay ten percent of their income and countless hours of free labor to a church that has hundreds of billions of dollars and tried really hard to keep people from knowing it.

I called the number on her business card, and she didn't answer, but at least it worked. So I texted her, and she hasn't responded yet, so I don't have anything juicy to share. Not that I intend, in the event of us having serious conversations about spirituality, consciousness, and the metaphysical, to share every word she writes or says, but I had to at least follow up on my previous post. Again, I'm not violating her privacy, I'm giving her free publicity. Not that she needs it from my woefully obscure little blog.

On an entirely unrelated note, on my way out of the park this evening, I encountered a friendly guy whom I had a little trouble understanding because English was his second language, but in the course of our interaction he asked me if I like men and invited me to go drink beer with him and then he'd suck my dick. The language barrier compounded my natural awkwardness and reluctance to emphatically say no to people. He asked questions about the shape and size of my dick. Oh, sir, it's very small, ridiculously small, much too small for you to bother with. I extricated myself from that by saying I needed to go home and get some work done. I should've just said, "I can't, I'm Mormon." He gave me a fist bump and never stopped smiling, which assuaged my guilt about rejecting him. It reminded me of the time as a kid when I was in the hayloft with an older (but still minor) cousin, and he whipped his out and told me he'd send me money when he got home if I sucked it, and I didn't think about it or realize how fucked up it was until years later. My family has issues, y'all. I still judge my cousin a hell of a lot less for that than for supporting Trump.

I confirmed from Amber's socials that she doesn't support Trump, but I would have bet my life on that anyway. And like I said, her values are more important than her beliefs. I know I can learn from her even if her beliefs are bullshit. (I said "if." Open-minded.)

If you look closely, you'll notice the little bitch sitting in front of the warehouse with his hands behind his head, going out of his way to show that he wasn't bothered by us. If that were true, of course, he wouldn't have kept his entire face hidden or stayed fifty feet away from the property line. If you zoom in, you'll notice that his mask looks like a third-grader's Halloween costume, but that's the sort of thing that makes MAGAts jizz themselves. The mask, I mean, but also third-graders, now that I think of it.

I don't know who made the ICE dummy - the hanging one, I mean - but it first made an appearance at the rally in Washington Square Park earlier that evening for the latest two innocent people murdered by this fascist trash. As it was carried away afterward, it drew positive attention from some bystanders, including one who eagerly opined that "these fuckers need to get the fuck out of our country." To me, it was a breath of fresh air. We're constantly told that we have a responsibility to be loving and tolerant toward people who go gleefully go around being as shitty as possible. We're told that it's wrong to wish any harm on them, even though the world would be drastically improved by their deaths. I'm speaking of all Trump supporters, but of course, that goes triple for the fascist secret police they love so much. ICE agents deserve every ounce of hate they get, and much, much more. They deserve to have their jobs made more difficult. They deserve to have crippling mental health problems from being harassed and taunted. They deserve to live in fear. They deserve to be prosecuted and get the same thing other fascists have gotten. They deserve all of that because they are pieces of shit, and it's so very refreshing to admit that instead of playing along with society's delusion that everyone deserves to be loved no matter what they do.

When I had a turn at the megaphone, I advised the little bitch in the Halloween mask to kill himself instead of waiting to see what's in store for him when Daddy Trump can't protect him anymore. The people responsible for this regime need to be held accountable when (not if) it falls, or the US will never recover. Welcoming their Confederate ancestors back into society instead of executing them for treason is part of the reason we're in this mess to begin with. Extrajudicial violence against ICE agents is not an effective approach, though, because it will just give their daddy the excuse he's been begging for to declare a civil war and escalate his authoritarian crackdowns. Is it morally wrong? Fuck no. Normal people look back at people who killed Gestapo agents or SS officers as heroes, but many of those same people will clutch their pearls and say "Violence is never the answer" if you so much as suggest that a modern thug who gets off on brutalizing people and tearing families apart deserves to die. That double standard pisses me off. Of course, they're not as bad as the millions of people who think they would have stood up to the original Nazis but are doing the exact opposite now that they have a chance to show their true character.

​This is also where I had a disagreement with Mary about the ICE agent piñata we destroyed a few months ago. While understanding the sentiment, she felt that it was misguided to hate individual agents with families who love them instead of just the system they're part of, and that the piñata should have depicted a piece of legislation instead of a person. The more I think about it, the more I have the opposite perspective. A piece of legislation never hurt anyone. Not once in all of history. People hurt people. ​If President Jackass didn't have a steady supply of assholes eager to do his bidding, he couldn't do shit with all the legislation, executive orders, and 2 a.m. Truth Social bowel movements in the world. Furthermore, it's the twenty-first century, we live in a country with unrestricted internet access, and ICE agents are perfectly aware that what they're doing is wrong. They're not victims. They're not helpless cogs in a machine. They're fascist trash and deserve to be treated as such. I don't give a fuck if they have families who love them. So did most of the original Nazis. "He was a father" is something you say when you know that a dead man had no redeeming qualities.

I sound like I'm trembling with rage, don't I? Nah, I just like using strong, blunt language instead of tiptoeing around truths that I'm not supposed to say. Again, it's refreshing. If you're offended by anything I wrote but not by what ICE is doing to people, you need to take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself why you're a consummate failure of a human being.