I had a marvelous time at the No Kings protest yesterday, of course, but not as marvelous as this evening at Liberty Park, where I gathered with friends and acquaintances to celebrate someone's birthday by destroying a piñata shaped like an ICE agent.

This was near the drum circle, an amazing weekly celebration I just found out about where people drum in a circle. The park is huge, the crowd is huge, and it gives off the "cool multicultural city" vibe that my previous hometowns never have. I'm sure half the people there were on drugs, and I intend to be on drugs there too at some point, though I'm taking a break from that stuff for a few weeks so I don't fry my brain. Anyway, several people noticed what we were doing and loved it. They laughed, they cheered, they took pictures, they got in line to take swings at it. I didn't get to swing because I let everyone go ahead of me because I loved seeing them have fun. There was enough stuff inside for everyone, and without being greedy, I scored a granola bar, a papaya, a few Hi-Chews, an "Abolish ICE" pin, and a Ruth Bader Ginsberg T-shirt. I love how this turned into a community event. I love how complete strangers had their day brightened. This picture doesn't even show all the people who were there.

On Tuesday, I protested at the governor's mansion against the warehouse that ICE just purchased behind the state's back. KSL interviewed me, and I even got first mention in the article, but I'm not crazy about how I was quoted.

This gives me some insight into how the news makes quotes. I didn't volunteer that bit about the governor; the reporter asked me if I thought it was likely to sway him, and I had to think about it for a moment, and I said probably not. The likelihood of success simply hadn't factored into my decision to speak out for what's right. I'm disappointed that he left out the part where I said ICE detentions are basically concentration camps and listed specific examples of the inhumane conditions - bad food, inadequate medical care, inadequate sleep. I feel like trimming that down to "It's just really inhumane" makes me look kind of dumb. I also said that the governor, the legislature, the LDS Church, and anyone else with a voice should speak out against this (even though I know they won't), and I also said that I wasn't advocating for open borders and lawlessness, but that the current anti-immigration push is less about legitimate security concerns than about making people afraid so they'll keep supporting Trump and others like him. I get that it was standard practice for the reporter not to use everything I said, but he cut all that and went with "I don't want another one to open in Salt Lake City" - the most basic, self-evident part? Really? (I did say words to that effect when he asked why I was there, but still.)

That evening, I continued my activism in a much less sexy way. The last caucus I went to was the Republican caucus in Logan, Utah in 2016, where most of the conversation revolved around stopping Trump from becoming the nominee. I don't remember anyone asking if anyone liked Trump; they just got down to the business of stopping him. If I recall correctly, we came to a consensus to nominate Ted Cruz instead. Though I'm not unafilliated and didn't want to go because I knew it would be boring, this week I went to the Democrat caucus, which once again had the agenda of stopping Trump. The urgency of our situation and the existence, despite the legislature pulling out all the stops to stop it, of a district that will actually represent us motivated a much bigger Democrat turnout than usual in this area. Still, only one other person from my precinct showed up, so now I'm stuck being the vice chair. I was really glad that he wanted to be the chair. He's well-spoken and very passionate about the Rio Grande plan, which has something to do with moving and/or restoring train tracks in the city for a better use of space and a massive economic boost. He explained it, but it went over my head.

The next day, I protested at the ICE warehouse with hundreds of other pissed-off people. The organizers asked us to disperse and go home when things got dicey, but no matter what the news says or who got arrested, I only saw ICE agents throwing rocks at their own windows. I could tell by their masks.

On Friday, I protested at the ICE center in West Valley, as usual. I enjoyed hanging out with my friend's kids, but nothing much happened there. The employees go home early on Fridays because of us.

On Saturday, Nick Shirley, the little shit who started the lies about Somalian daycare center owners committing fraud in Minnesota because conservatives don't understand that it's normal for daycares to lock their doors and not let in random creepy men with cameras, charged idiots an obscene amount of money to have dinner with him at a measles hotspot, the aquarium in Draper. I didn't feel like making the trip for that protest. I stayed home, earned some money, and didn't feel guilty about practicing self-care and having balance.

This afternoon, I went to a singing resistance event at the First Baptist Church. There are several progressive clergy members in this city doing what the LDS Church should be doing on a much larger scale but won't because it has no balls. They sang at the warehouse, too. Despite all the problems with Christianity's truth claims, I think Jesus is a great symbol, and these people are using him the way he should be used. I wish their churches all power and success. The sense of community was great, and experiencing joy was, in itself, a powerful act of protest against a fascist regime that wants us frightened and discouraged, and that's what life is really about regardless of beliefs. They're going to try to get everyone to sing with them at No Kings this weekend, which of course I will be at and strongly encourage everyone in the country to be at. It's going to be a very bad weekend for the orange taint.

Utah's Republicunt legislature has pulled out all the stops to thwart the will of the voters, violate the law, and deny representation to Salt Lake City's substantial Democrat population, but as of now, the non-gerrymandered map chosen by the judicial branch to comply with the law still stands, and a district with a chance of electing a Democrat to Congress still exists. I'm not a Democrat, but I'll probably vote for Democrats for the foreseeable future because Republicunts are a cancer. On Monday, the 71 Percent Coalition (a pro-Palestine group) and Black Lives Matter Utah hosted a town hall attended by all the Democrat candidates that don't suck (not Ben McAdams and Kathleen Riebe), which I'm sharing here for some reason even though I don't think anyone in Salt Lake City reads my blog. Wait, it's private? Um, okay. How silly.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to mention it was to share a beautiful life lesson. I attended in person - actually, I arrived late, and I'm sorry if I was a little brusque toward the person who prevented me from just walking into the auditorium like I wanted. "Are you here for the town hall?" No, I thought this was a Nickelback concert. I didn't notice the signs or the huge banner that said "Town Hall" before I tried to walk in. I didn't say any of that, but it probably came through in my tone of voice when I said "Yes." So I was there, but after a while, it occurred to me that I could have stayed home until it was over and then watched it on Youtube at 2x speed, thereby giving myself more time to earn money training chatbots from home. I thought maybe my being there was a pointless waste of time.

Afterward, though, I crossed paths with Mustafa, a gentleman from Palestine who co-founded the 71 Percent Coalition. I see him at a lot of things. For some time, he's greeted me warmly and sometimes called me "Old Faithful" for my attendance at their weekly protests before the ceasfire. He gave me a keffiyeh, though he's given lots of people keffiyehs, so I'm not saying that makes me special. I and two mutual friends visited him at his car dealership a couple of months ago. For an hour, we talked about things besides Palestine or politics, and we had Arabic coffee (which it turns out I hate, but nothing personal) and some of his employee's birthday cake. He encouraged me to do more to promote my books. I was very impressed by his ability to compartmentalize and focus on everyday stuff while such horrific things are going on in his homeland. In an alternate timeline, his granddaughter could have been one of the children murdered by Israeli soldiers.

It's not like we're best friends or anything, so I wasn't expecting him to say, "It's my favorite person!" Or maybe he said, "How's my favorite person?" I've already forgotten. I'm getting old. I was like, "Really?" And he was like, "Yes, you're the only person I see at every event. You're an inspiration." Again, I've forgotten the exact words, but "You're an inspiration" is the gist, unless my brain is fabricating that to stoke my ego. I must point out that my attendance at every event isn't just a result of my dedication but also of my work schedule being literally whatever I want. But hey, I could still be doing other things with my time, so I'll take the praise anyway. Then I walked outside and talked to some other friends I've made my protesting. The beautiful life lesson, in case you missed it, is that I've made a positive impact on people even though it doesn't often feel like anything I do matters.

They asked how I like my new place, I mentioned the cockroaches, and one of them said he once lived in a place with so many roaches that the floor turned from black to white when he turned on the light, and they would swarm his face and stuff. That was probably in a third-world country on an LDS mission. It reminded me that seeing one to three cockroaches a week isn't so bad. If they ever swarm my face, I think I'll kill myself. If they ever change the color of the floor, I think I'll burn down the apartment with myself inside. Mine don't really scatter, though. They either keep going about their business or freeze like they think I can't see them if they don't move. They only run when I come after them, and they're not good at it. So far, I have a 100% kill rate - one escaped under the cupboards, but I lured it back out with a Roach Motel, so it avoided my fist only to slowly die of thirst. I still think its life had more value than an ICE agent's.

Anyway, I'm not sure which of these delightful District 1 candidates to vote for. Policy-wise, none of them stood out to me as clearly better than the others, but Michael Farrell's attitude got my attention as the night wore on. He called people in this administration "fascist freaks" and "pedophiles" and complained about "the stupidest man in the world" being elected twice. At one point, he had to restrain himself from saying "motherfucking." I think that's exactly the attitude and energy we need in addition to good policies. This administration has normalized corruption, cruelty, and evil on an astonishing scale. It all needs to be un-normalized. We're not up against legitimate politicians with valid differences of opinion, we're up against fascist freaks who should be in jail. It's refreshing to hear someone seeking office speak that truth so bluntly and not care whether it's "proper." I'll probably vote for him, but I'd be happy with any of these people. I'm just worried that we'll get McAdams or Riebe instead.

I'm against the escalating war in the Middle East for the same reasons as most Americans, except for rising gas prices, which I'd be lying if I said I give much of a crap about. Surprisingly, my very conservative mother said years ago that gas prices weren't high enough to reflect the environmental damage it causes, and she wasn't wrong. Anyway, I'm still glad the Ayatollah and several members of his evil regime are dead. My position on that hasn't changed and won't change. I'm allowed to acknowledge the positives of illegal and destructive wars that I can't stop.

I went to a protest against the war yesterday, but I hung back noncommitally until I was sure the speakers wouldn't defend the evil regime. Of course, they didn't mention how it treats women and queer people or that it recently killed far more of its own citizens than American and Israeli bombs have, but they didn't say anything stupid about its sovereignty or right to exist either, so that's a win. They just said stuff I agree with about how war ruins people's lives and makes weapons manufacturers fabulously wealthy while we can't afford healthcare. There was a verbal altercation between a brown woman in a Ukraine flag and a loud, insufferable-looking white guy, after which the woman left, and I think that had something to do with why the organizer of the protest, a young Iranian-American, got up at the end and asked us to remember the people we're fighting for, and to respect Iranian-Americans who have a different perspective, and that this was for them, not us. She got some tepid applause, and she said she was relieved to not get booed off the stage. But yeah, I happen to know that some Iranians, including those actually in Iran at the present moment, are thrilled about this war. They hate the regime that much. They'd rather take their chances with the bombs than keep living under constant oppression with no end in sight.

Many of us then marched from the Federal Building up to the Capitol to joing a protest for women's rights, and I saw a Mormon sister missionary across the street filming us as we chanted anti-Trump slogans, so I assume she either agreed with us or just wanted to affirm her testimony of the wickedness of the last days. This second protest was almost over when I left because the speaker said something stupid about the former president of Venezuela. First of all, I thought it was a hell of a stretch to bring him up in the first place, as the speaker used the kidnapping of him and the First Lady as an example of Trump's disdain for women. But the part that made me leave was the speaker's false claim that Nicolas Maduro was "democratically elected." If that were true, it wouldn't make him less of a brutal dictator, but it's not true. He was an incumbent president who lost re-election by a significant margin and refused to leave office - you know, just like Trump tried to do, but he got away with it because Venezuela's highest court is even more corrupt than the USA's. I hope the speaker was just laughably ignorant, not lying out of a compulsion to shield socialist governments from criticism, but it pissed me off a little either way.

Someone at this protest gave me a handout for an activist study group hosted by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization to "discuss how we can build the socialisty movement with Marxism-Leninism!" I would be interested in attending with an open mind, except that I'd probably find every single person there insufferable. Mind you, I'll still stand with them against fascists any day of the week. It's just so refreshing to have the integrity and clarity to criticize both sides, even though one side is clearly much, much worse.

A friend sent me this music video the other day. The music and the video were both made with AI in 32 hours, and they're very much the opposite of "slop" (though I readily acknowledge that most of what's called "AI slop" is, in fact, slop). Great tune, great lyrics, great shots. I'm blown away. My childhood dream of turning my daydreams into movies is closer than my more sensible adult self ever imagined. Of course,  it's also legitimately scary how good this video is. Soon it will be impossible to tell the difference between AI and reality, and I have no idea how or if society is going to adapt to that. The legal system already has safeguards in place against fabricated photographic or video evidence, but the average American who already believes everything they see in social media is about to get mind-screwed. There are also potential legal concerns about using actors' likenesses. I don't know much about that, but I know that Giselle from "Enchanted" isn't an official Disney Princess because Disney would have to pay Amy Adams every time they used her likeness, even in illustrated form, so it seems inevitable that sooner or later, someone is going to sue over their likeness appearing in an unauthorized music video. Hopefully not a really badass one like this, though.

Going back through the videos, I could see how much they've improved in only a year. A Pirates of the Caribbean music video from a year ago, "Dead Men Tell No Tales," is still good but looks and sounds more artificial. Unfortunately, going back through the videos is also how I discovered one about DOGE. I read the transcript instead of listening/watching, and it's Elon Musk bragging about how he'll root out all the corruption and waste in the government and send the perpetrators "Straight to Jail." I would have been happier not knowing that the guy behind these videos is MAGA. I couldn't resist trying to make him feel embarrassed for thinking that the richest man in the world would root out corruption and waste out of the goodness of his heart. I commented, "This aged like milk." Mic drop. Even MAGA, with its famous disdain for basic logic and objective reality, can't argue that point... can it?

This guy simply responded, "ikr." (On the remote chance that anyone for whom English is a second language is reading this, that means, "I know, right?") I actually respect that. So fine, okay, I'll separate the artist from the art. Yes, even though it may be controversial, I am calling him an "artist" because he puts a lot of work into these songs and videos, several of them are very, very good, and I don't know what else to call him. The world is better because these songs and videos are in it. The world is worse because of his politics, but his individual influence in that regard is probably negligible anyway. Just like mine. Heavy sigh.

The hopeless romantic inside me has been screaming to get out for years. Since I told my friend Mary that I was thoroughly smitten with her, she's let me let him out by writing her love poems and saying really sweet things, especially when I'm high. Just the sweet things, I mean. I haven't yet attempted to write a poem while I'm high because that takes more effort than I usually feel like making. Mary is emotionally unavailable for various reasons that may or may not ever change, but at least she lets me express myself. I don't care if you think that's pathetic. I think it's sweet.

So this year, I asked if I could send her flowers for Valentine's Day. I would have done it without asking except that I had to get her address. She said she loved flowers, briefly exposing the sensitive soul beneath her tough exterior. Then I procrastinated because the trauma from years of poverty makes spending large amounts of money feels like cutting my fingers off. Then, two days before Valentine's Day, the store I'd picked to order from was too busy to take any more orders for Valentine's Day. I was horrified... until I remembered that her birthday was two weeks later. I asked if she would be crushed if the flowers were a few days late and apologized for letting her down. She said I hadn't let her down because I didn't owe her anything. Then I hoped she would forget about the whole thing and be surprised on her birthday, which was my brilliant plan all along.

I see the florist picked yellow because I selected "Friend" on the order form. There wasn't a "Friend who is vocally in love but respects boundaries" option. I knew that yellow was the apology color, and I used yellow flowers for that purpose once many years ago. I found out that it was also the color of friendship when a friend sent me a yellow heart emoji, which didn't make me think of friendship so much as cholesterol poisoning. My friendly little note was something like, "Happy birthday, Mary! You are a star shining in the darkness, and I am so blessed to have your light in my life." I gravitated toward that metaphor and once wrote an entire poem stretching it to the limit because she's one of the bright spots that makes living through these godawful times worth it. Not the only one, of course. I haven't made her solely responsible for my happiness because that would be unfair to her and unhealthy for me. See, I'm mature and stuff.

I felt like it was my birthday too, though, when Iran's "Supreme Leader" and several other vermin were removed from the planet. Now look, I hate the U.S. government. I hate the Israeli government. I don't think Trump should be allowed to unilaterally order strikes and bombings whenever he wants. I don't want another twenty-year war in the Middle East. Nonetheless, what's happened has happened, and the deaths of these dictators, torturers, and murderers are very good things, and certain leftists who can't see that really need to get their heads out of their asses. The Ayatollah was evil. The Islamic Republic is evil. Whoever needs to hear this, please stop saying stupid shit like "Iran has a right to defend itself" as if its brutal theocracy, which very recently murdered thousands of protesters, represents the people who are currently cheering, dancing in the streets, setting off fireworks, and writing "Rest in piss" on Reddit every time another member of it is reported dead. (Seriously, they love that phrase.) This. Is. What. Iranians. Wanted.

And again, I'm not unaware of the political problems with the circumstances under which it happened, the unacceptable collateral damage to civilians, or the risks for the future, but not wanting wars is not, in itself, a sufficient reason not to kill dictators. "No wars" is an ideal to strive for. It's not an absolute value like "No child porn." Given the choice between having a war and leaving generations of people to live in hell, I know what I find morally preferable. Oh, and in this instance, there's the little detail that the US is responsible for the current dictatorship in Iran because the CIA overthrew its democratic government in 1953 and installed a monarchy, which the Islamists overthrew in 1979. The US owes Iran. This is a form of restitution, though it won't do any good to the millions who have already lived out their lives under this regime. Oh, and this regime also supplies weapons to Russia, which just entered the fifth year of its three-day military operation against Ukraine. So that not happening anymore is another potential benefit.

I guess this regime also supports Palestine against Israel, which may be the sole reason why certain leftists are pretending it deserves to exist. Oh well. Evil people have their moments, as evidenced by Trump and Netanyahu having one this weekend, but that's still not a good enough reason for Khamenei and his cronies to stay alive and continue spreading misery and death. Byeatollah!*

*A leftist acquaintance on Facebook flipped me off for posting that. I told him (in Spanish, because he spoke Spanish), "If you like a murdering dictator, you can burn in hell with him." I know insulting people doesn't often change their minds, but he needed one hell of a reality check. And he said, "The same for pedophilic and genocidal idolaters." And I said, "Of course, Trump and Netanyahu are also pieces of shit. I'm just happy that they did a good thing." He didn't respond, perchance because his brain had exploded.