Yesterday, the Russia-supported regime in Syria collapsed after well over a decade of civil war that the Western world had almost entirely forgotten about. Russia was unable to continue supplying the regime with weapons because it's getting destroyed by Ukraine. This is Assad day for Putin and a happy day for almost everyone else. Also, I played with my adorable nieces today and saw the new one for the first time. Also, Spotify Wrapped is out after two months of useless "When will Spotify Wrapped be out? We don't know" articles. This year I listened for almost 93 days, two more days than last year. I gotta keep getting those numbers up. Xeen Music and the Beatles were in my top five artists last year as well. To reiterate, Xeen Music publishes the soundtracks of computer games from the 80s and 90s, and the Beatles are an obscure 60s British rock group. David Arkenstone is a prolific New Age composer whom my family often listened to on Sunday mornings and long car trips. Pete Seeger was a prolific communist folk singer who fortunately didn't live to see the rise of fascism in his home country. Steve Horelick is the main credited artist for the songs sung by the jukebox band on the old children's show "Shining Time Station," and he's in my top artists simply because I listened to every one of those songs after I found them, though I was actually looking (without success) for the original version of the show's theme song. My top songs: Skatt Bros - Walk The Night - 12" VersionPopularized by the dancing doll in the horror film "M3GAN." I used the 12" version because for any song worth listening to, longer is better. Robin Gibb - You Don't Say Us AnymoreThis is hands down my favorite song from Robin Gibb's solo career, but it wasn't on Spotify for a while, so when it was, I listened to it several times. Ryan Paris and George Aaron - Can Delight - MaxiThe original version by My Mine isn't on Spotify, which is a crime against humanity. This version is fine, though. Charlie - It's InevitableWith the guitars, the synths, the vocal style, and the iffy messaging around consent, this is the quintessential 80s rock song and deserves to be a lot more popular than it is. Rabbit - It's LoveThis year, I randomly remembered this song from a trailer at the end of the Pokémon VHS tapes my mom threw away, and I nostalgia'd the hell out of it.
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This exchange took place on a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed by a woman describing the intense misogyny she experiences in Utah. There were a few reasons for me to virtue signal like this - to validate the author, to call out the jackass men in the comments who were already claiming she made it up, and to let women know that they have an ally. I know it's very psychologically draining for them to not see any men coming to their aid. People talk about virtue signaling like it's worse than actually being a bigot, but up to a point, I like it when people signal their virtues so I know whether or not I want to associate with them at all. Obviously people can lie, but in my experience, shitty people on the internet don't try very hard to hide their true colors, especially since the election. What a coincidence. Anyway, it was a full three days before a man took the bait. It's beyond pathetic that he took the time to write all that and pretended like he was speaking for a broad coalition of people. I was planning to present this comment here, without censoring his name, as objective proof that not every human life has value. But then: plot twist. Now I have to give him the benefit of the doubt because I don't know much about fentanyl. I've only had enough experience to be confident that the safer and more legal drugs I use can't make me do, say, or even think anything that's against my values. I don't think they actually control me at all. They alter my consciousness and make my agency feel weird in a way I can't put into words, but I still do and say what I want to do. See, for example, the text messages I wrote to a friend the third time I got high. I let myself say weird things because I knew she'd find them hilarious, but I didn't say anything inappropriate or evil. Last time I followed a prompting to message an acquaintance from high school whose partner killed himself, and I didn't say anything weird. I didn't tell her I was high. I didn't tell her that while I was looking at Messenger, contemplating what to say, tears came to my eyes as I thought, He loved you so much. He never wanted to hurt you. He never would have done it if he'd known how much it would hurt you. Please don't be mad at him.
When I'm high, I feel more loving and more empathetic. For example, a while ago I had been arguing on Instagram with a Mormon teenager about the racism in the Book of Mormon. He had started it by making a snarky comment on an ex-Mormon page, and I wasn't actually rude to him at all. I stuck with dispassionate facts and logic. He stopped responding, which I took to mean that I'd won. But when I got high later, I felt so empathetic toward him. He was just a kid trying to defend his beliefs, and I'd probably caused him unpleasant cognitive dissonance that could potentially spiral into a full-blown existential crisis. So I said something conciliatory. Then he, for some reason, looked at my profile and asked why I supported Kamala, and I ignored him instead of telling that was a stupid thing for someone who supported a rapist and felon to ask. I know alcohol lowers people's inhibitions and brings out more of their true selves. Good people don't become abusive when they get drunk. I had a friend who asked me to hug his fiancée while he was drunk. If Kush Kubes are the same, then my true self is love. I'd like to think so. I know that might sound far-fetched based on some of my blog posts. But look, I love people without regard to race, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or taste in music. I don't love people who hurt me or other people. I don't love Trump supporters because their idiotic choices are going to make my life and, frankly, most Americans' lives much worse. I don't love Trump supporters because they're either bigots and fascists or willing allies of bigots and fascists. That's a shortcoming on my part, but it's not hypocrisy. I hope to get over it someday. I know most people think they're doing the right thing. I know there are all kinds of psychological reasons why humans think rationally. I just don't understand why grown adults with unrestricted internet access are easier to brainwash than first graders, and I haven't yet found a compelling reason to not be pissed off by it. After spending Thanksgiving alone - which was fine, really; I'm not asking for sympathy - I went to the mall on Black Friday to feed off human energy. Lo and behold, I noticed a kiosk that sells Kush Kubes, and they were $25, which is $10 cheaper than at the smoke shop where I got mine, and the lady said that was the regular price and not a Black Friday sale. I got two bags. I should have gotten fifty bags in case Trump's tariffs drive the prices up next month. She was going to let me have them without showing my ID, but I showed it to her anyway. I hope she remembers that in the future and doesn't get busted by an undercover cop. She had an accent, so she was probably from a European country where children are allowed to have Delta-9. I talked to a Mormon friend while she was traveling, and like every time I talk to her, she asked with some amusement if I'd been on a trip lately. On the one hand, she's an orthodox Mormon with a literal belief in prophets and the Book of Mormon, but on the other hand, she's politically progressive, she doesn't always wear her garments (which I noticed by accident, I swear), she tolerates me sending her rants about the church, and she tacitly encourages my drug use. She was traveling to meet her sister's girlfriend's family for the first time. She said that in Utah she felt awkward about mentioning that her sister had a girlfriend, but she'd gotten over it and found people more accepting than she expected. We agree that same-sex relationships aren't a big deal. I mentioned the cognitive dissonance I'd felt as a Mormon being told that they were sinful even though they didn't seem sinful. She admitted that she's currently having that same cognitive dissonance. She used the term "nuanced" to describe herself for the first time I can remember. I just thought that was cool. I'm happy for her. And I don't want her to have to leave the church if she doesn't want to, but this anecdote just convinces me even more that it will have to change to keep that from happening. She's not some uber-feminist who wants the priesthood or some cultural member who takes the Book of Mormon as inspired ficion. She's just a normal person who, even if she hasn't said these words out loud yet, knows that the church's positions on LGBTQ+ people are wrong because she's actually met LGBTQ+ people. The church will either become more or less hostile to people like her over time. Right now it seems determined to only cater to its most bigoted and closed-minded membersm. It seems determined to make its tent as small as possible. That might be a side effect of most of its top leaders being white men older than my grandparents. In summary, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Next year will be rough. Enjoy the holidays while you can. PSA: I watched "Heretic" the other day and intend on writing a full review in the near future, perhaps after I've seen it again. I'm not sure yet how I feel about the third act, but the characters are great. Hugh Grant is a phenomenal villain, somehow equal parts charming and douchey. The missionaries are intelligent and resourceful beneath their surface naivete. The themes provoke a lot of thought and discussion. I recommend. To reiterate for anyone out of the loop, I get high for spiritual purposes. The recreational aspect is just a (substantial) bonus. I was going to write a whole post to go with this, but I simply can't find the motivation. Every time I get high is more intense than the last, and attempting to describe it would be hopeless. I guess people just need to experience it for themselves. Or not. I don't encourage anyone to do drugs. I just try to break down the stigma and share my experiences. At this point, I think I can say that the gummies have permanently altered my brain. I was willing to take that risk because it's not like my brain was in great condition to begin with. I laugh more often now. I've always appreciated humor, but it rarely surprised me enough to trigger the laughter reflex. Now I lie awake at night laughing as I reminisce about a Key and Peele video I watched the previous day. (The lying awake part isn't new. If I can't sleep either way, I may as well enjoy it.) So that's been a delightful surprise. This time, I felt so blissful and so out of my body that I think my fear of death is almost entirely gone. In those moments it seemed so obvious to me that I don't have consciousness, I am consciousness, and when the body I'm stuck inside stops working, I'll go somewhere else and it won't be a big deal. Then I had all these other profound thoughts and felt moved to reach out to someone I hadn't talked to since high school whose partner killed himself. And I also listened to some music. While I listened to the Michael Stearns track "Encounter," I imagined myself in a field at night seeing a spaceship, then in the woods knowing there were aliens all around me. It wasn't like a real vivid hallucination, perhaps because I'm not a very visual thinker to begin with, but it was intense. I was thinking, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God... It was like a VR horror game that you know isn't real but still get you swept up in the moment. Frightening, but in the best way. And then I just listened to some other stuff that came to mind. Michael Stearns - EncounterQuiet Riot - Cum On Feel the NoizeThe Motels - Suddenly Last SummerCharlie - It's InevitableOnyanko Club - Sailor Fuku wo NugasanaideTrek With Quintronic - When I Was YoungAuralnauts - Ahsoka 1986 End CreditsWilliam Onyeabor - Heaven and HellTo the shock of people who haven't paid attention to anything for the last nine years, Trump is picking the least qualified crackpots and criminals he can possibly find for every government position. The best-case scenario for this country is that they'll be too incompetent and have too many competing agendas to accomplish anything, and that our enemies will be chivalrous enough to not attack us while our defense secretary is a Fox News host who doesn't wash his hands because he doesn't believe in germs. I'm trying not to stress about how screwed we are because that won't help anything. It's still a touchy subject with me, though. Yeah, as hard as I'm trying to be spiritual and enlightened and stuff, I haven't yet figured out how to generate any tolerance, patience, or love for pathologically stupid people whose pathological stupidity directly makes my life worse. (I did take the time to make sure this one was actually a Trump supporter and I wasn't misinterpreting soem kind of weird sarcasm.) And if being so unkind to her was wrong, why did it feel so, so good? By the way, this is probably the only purple-haired woman on Earth who supports Trump. She's probably unaware that right-wing misogynists use women with unnatural hair colors as a derisive shorthand for everything they hate about liberalism and/or feminism. ADDENDUM: Literally today. These people have never had an original thought in their lives. Anyway, I need to talk about something else. I'm obsessed with the late Nigerian musician William Onyeabor this week. I've loved his catchy, repetitive electronic melodies and simple yet sometimes deep lyrics for over a decade, but I'm in a phase of loving them even more right now. Here are a couple of songs that have been on repeat in my head. He has plenty of equally deserving songs, but I'll limit myself to two and increase the chance of someone actually listening to them and appreciating my taste in music, which is all I've ever really wanted out of life. Heaven and HellFantastic ManSpeaking of "Fantastic Man," that's also the name of a cool documentary about him that I want to share with everyone but can't because I don't know who else cares about such a niche topic. I just think history and culture and music are really interesting. It's only half an hour, so you don't have much to lose. I found it by accident while trying to find information about "Crashes in Love," a movie he claimed to have made in 1977 that nobody has ever seen because that's just the kind of person he was. Now here's a little mystery that's gnawed at me this week, and possibly nobody else in the world cares, but this is my blog and I'm going to write about it. When Catherine Warwick was fourteen, she sang a few songs on the soundtrack album for the game known as "Mother" in Japan and "EarthBound Beginnings" in the US. The most famous of these is "Pollyanna," a deliciously optimistic number that's perfect for forgetting about how screwed we are, but "Bein' Friends" is almost as good. PollyannaBein' FriendsAfter that, she had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at a music career, then reportedly became a music teacher and started a family. I only know that because of my recent unsuccessful attempt to find out if she sang a couple of songs in the Lego Island Xtreme Stunts game. The uncredited singer really sounds like her to me. The voice is perhaps just a touch deeper, which makes sense because she would have been twenty-seven instead of fourteen. These songs were both as good as anything on the radio in the early 2000s, so you should listen to them even if you don't share my curiosity. The first is a chill techno track and the second is a sweet love ballad. Honestly, LEGO media from the 2000s included so much good music that deserves to be on streaming platforms but isn't. 2-StepLEGO is All I NeedAt least one of my family members read my post last week and wasn't happy about it. I knew that might happen. I'm not (usually) stupid. But Lord knows it's not as if I didn't try several times to communicate with her before I resorted to venting my frustration online. I never tried to change her political philosophy, only to show her that Donald Trump is incompatible with it. She wants limited government and adherence to the Constitution. Donald Trump will give her the opposite. But she literally just ignored everything I sent her about Project 2025 because it wasn't from the one news source she reads, and to her apparent shock, that didn't exactly convince me that she'd put a lot of rational thought into a legitimate alternate viewpoint that deserved my respect. I'm not sorry for anything I wrote. I can't say I stand by everything I wrote, though, because I said I thought Harris would win in a landslide. Why did I think that? First of all, although he doesn't predict margins, Professor Allan Lichtman predicted a Harris victory with his thirteen keys model, which was developed by studying elections going back to 1960 and had successfully predicted every election since 1984 (with an asterisk for 2000 because thousands of votes for Al Gore were wrongfully thrown out). He predicted Reagan's re-election at a time when his popularity was historically low and 60% of Americans thought he was too old to run again, and he predicted Trump's first victory when all the polls said Clinton would win. He's since given his thoughts on why the keys didn't work this time - unprecedented misinformation about the economy and border security, unprecedented trashing of the incumbent president by his own party, and racism and misogyny. I know any conservative who reads this will roll their eyes at that last part, as if their side hasn't been launching racist and misogynistic attacks on Harris from the moment she announced her campaign. I said I thought her race and sex would be advantageous because they'd energize young people who want something different, and all the racist and misogynists were going to vote for the racist and misogynistic candidate regardless. I overestimated young people a lot. More on that later. But Harris objectively did generate enthusiasm. Her campaign announcement was followed by record-breaking donations and a massive spike in voter registration. It makes no sense that she got fewer votes than Biden. I also thought, like many, that women would flood the polls in droves to elect her because they're so pissed about losing Roe v. Wade. That didn't happen. In the states where abortion rights measures were on the ballot, they got significantly more votes than Harris herself did. That makes no goddamn sense at all. Voting for abortion rights and the guy who took them away in the first place is like... well, I won't even bother coming up with a comparison because it's self-explanatory. Anyway, I didn't see the same enthusiasm for Trump. Voters rejected him and his ilk in 2018, 2020, and 2022. The midterm "red wave" we were supposed to get didn't happen. Why would I have expected it to happen now? Despite the persistence of hopeless MAGA cultists who would suck Trump's dick if he dismembered their children in front of them, I hardly imagined he could be as popular now as when he lost four years ago. Within that time, he led an insurrection to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, he was found legally liable for rape, he was convicted of 34 felonies, his brain turned into cottage cheese, and several former members of his administration begged us not to vote for him. Attendance at his rallies dwindled, and hundreds of people left early while he rambled about Hannibal Lecter, sharks, and windmills. But now he wins the popular vote for the first time? What the fuck? I certainly hope the possibility of fraud is being investigated. I said possibility. I'm not asserting that there was fraud just because I hate the outcome, and if no evidence of fraud turns up, I don't advocate for liberals to storm the Capitol and file scores of baseless lawsuits. But the results are sketchy and should be investigated. Republicans constantly accuse Democrats of the things they do themselves, and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if this were another such instance, especially since they have a 900-page blueprint for creating a dictatorship now that they control all three branches of government. It's not hyperbole, it's not a conspiracy theory, it's right there in their own words that have been available to the public for a long time. If we don't have a Christofascist theocracy within the next four years, it sure as hell won't be because Republicans didn't try. It will be because Americans stopped them. Getting high the night before the eleaction to calm my nerves was a mistake. I should have gotten high the night of the election. I thought I'd want to be sober while I watched the results, and then Harris would win and my stress would dissipate. Instead, as I feared, I became suicidal for two days. When I was high, as I often do when I'm high, I grappled with my mortality. The high is more intense every time, and this time, I thought my heart might stop at any moment, and I felt so out of my body that I felt like if I relaxed completely, I would drift away from it and possibly never return. I had a one-sided argument that I couldn't die yet because reasons. I told this unseen and possibly imaginary something that if I could die temporarily and have a near-death experience right now, that would be great, but I didn't trust it to bring me back. And there was a whole other thing where I wondererd if the water heater on the other side of my bedroom wall would explode and kill or horribly disfigure me, but I decided that I trusted the homeowner to keep it well-maintained, so that was fine. I also heard a helicopter that sounded close enough to crash into the house. Anyway, the high was pure bliss, and if that's what actual death feels like, sign me up. But instead I was in this reality where the worst person in the world just became my president again, this time with virtually no guardrails. I had to talk to a suicide hotline and several friends to upgrade to feeling nothing. (I also mentioned it to the aforementioned family member, who responded, "You could move to Costa Rica.") Of course my friends wanted me to stay alive so they wouldn't be sad, but they were miserable too, and none of them could promise me that the rest of my life won't suck. I do believe my life will get much worse next year when Trump raises the price of everything with his dumbass tariffs and puts an anti-vaxxer with a brain worm in charge of healthcare and food. My life will continue to get worse in the long term as Republicans gleefully shit all over the environment. Depending on how bad things get, Trump may run out of Democrats, journalists, and late show hosts to persecute and send the military after me for criticizing him since 2015. But I'm not just worried for myself, because unlike my conservative family members (yes, if you're reading this, I'm calling you out again. Bite me), I'm capable of empathy for people who are different from me. I feel deeply for everyone who's explicitly targeted by the GOP's Christofascist agenda and has more reason to be afraid than I do. Empathy is excruciating. I can understand why my family members and everyone else who voted against their fellow humans' lives prefer not to be burdened by it. But of course, Trump voters have metaphorically stabbed themselves too. They lost big on Tuesday. They just don't know it yet. They're about to learn the hard way just how few shits their orange savior gives about them, and when they do, I hope I'm not too mature to rub it in their faces. At this point they have no excuse for not knowing better. Beyond the specifics, though, what really crushed my soul and sapped my will to live was the realization of just how fundamentally vile this country is. It could have shown girls that they can do anything, but instead it showed boys that they can lie, cheat, and rape to their hearts' content and become the most powerful person in the world with no qualifications. I thought fascism would be defeated with a few elections and a lot of funerals. Now I see that it's deeply woven into the fabric of American society. I had heard that Gen Z boys were more racist and sexist than previous generations because of influencers like Andrew Taint and Nick Fuentes who for some reason haven't been shot yet, but I had no idea how bad it was. I suppose I should have guessed. A few months ago I documented my own experience with speaking out against sexist comments on social media and immediately being targeted by scores of men who accused me of trying to get laid because that's the only motivation they could imagine for treating women like people, but I thought they were a really loud and annoying minority. The phrase "Your body, my choice" went viral after the election. I recommend that all women carry firearms. Women aren't the source of this country's gun violence problem, so I have few concerns about them abusing said firearms. Also, doxxing white supremacists is not wrong. I don't 'understand why that's even a debate. Speaking of cesspools, I just joined the mass migration from Twitter (where I've been suspended since June for refusing to delete my response to a racist who said that Juneteenth isn't a real holiday) to Bluesky, which is like Twitter except it isn't crawling with Nazis and isn't owned by a douchebag billionaire (yet). Actually, the CEO, Jay Graber, is a woman of color. Again, as I said last week, that in itself wouldn't be a sufficient reason to use the site, but it is a nice bonus that I get to support diversity in the software industry at the same time that I'm not supporting Elon Musk. I've already reunited with some of my ex-Mormon and progressive Mormon friends from Twitter, but the conservative Mormons who base their entire personalities on hating gay people and apostates are conspicuously absent. The downside is that I don't know who I'm supposed to argue with now. My feed is full of anti-Trump sentiments, inspirational quotes, Nancy comics, Homestar Runner screenshots, pictures of astronomy, and pictures of people's pets. How am I supposed to work up any righteous indignation over that? If I were still in the LDS Church, I would have gone today and been surrounded by people praising Jesus that a rapist was re-elected president. Instead, I met with the Cache Valley Unitarian Universalists, and we shared words of mourning and comfort during this dark time for all of us. The religion doesn't endorse parties or candidates, of course, but its values are diametrically opposed to everything the rapist-in-chief stands for. I love this community. And I think what all of us who are struggling will need the most is community. When our external circumstances suck, life can still be worth living if we share the suckage together, like my friends and I did. I've also decided that even though I wouldn't have chosen to live through such times for anything, they give me the opportunity to fight for what's right more courageously than ever. I'm willing to die for the rights of people who are different from me. I probably won't. My resistance probably won't be that sexy. It will probably consist for the most part of boring, run-of-the-mill political advocacy and donating to organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Earthjustice, and the Environmental Defense Fund. I wish I had more money to donate. I might soon, in the unlikely event that my book sales are stronger than Trump's tariffs.
Anyway, these are dark times. The future will suck more than most of us hoped. We may need to take breaks, to mourn, to practice self-care. But if we give up on this nation's future, we doom our fellow Americans and people all over the world, and we give the fascists exactly what they want. Dictatorships get a lot of their power from people capitulating to them before they've even done anything. So let's not do that. I'd rather be on record preemptively telling our new overlords to go fuck themselves in every possible orifice. And don't forget to keep joking even when the more rational reaction is to scream. It will keep us sane, and fascists hate being laughed at. Jimmy Kimmel can attest to that. |
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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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