I already devoted part of a post some months ago to the topic of my dog's inevitable death and the effect it would have on me, so there's no need to rehash that here. It just seems perverse that dogs have such short life spans. It seems as perverse to me as if a human child were to die of old age when he was twelve. And now I have to wait so very, very long to see him again. I keep thinking about how I can no longer scratch his head and feel his cold, wet nose. I loved the feeling of his nose so much that I went out of my way to touch it with my arm whenever I scratched his head.

Milo was quite annoying at times. He constantly wanted attention, and if he came up to you and you didn't pay attention to him, he went and sulked. Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, scratching his head would prompt him to start licking his lips noisily. We tried to discourage that by holding his mouth closed, and he got the message, so sometimes his tongue would just out and quiver as he visibly strained with the effort of not doing it. Why? Sometimes when I walked him, he would move behind me to my other side, so that I had to spin around so the leash wasn't behind me. When I could tell I was about to do that I would stop walking, and he would stop too, and we would have a brief stalemate. But even at the height of annoyance, it never obscured the feeling of love that was always present.

Milo's love was not unconditional, but was predicated on the right conditions. I fed him, walked him and lavished affection on him, and in return he loved me. So I had to do something to deserve that love, but nothing excessively difficult or arbitrary. I kind of like that even better than unconditional love because I don't see why I should feel particularly good about a love that would be the same if I were Hitler. This kind of love convinces me that I'm a good person but that I'm not expected to be perfect. I also felt my own love for Milo more overtly than for anyone else ever. I'm sure I love my family more, but that's more of the subdued taking-for-granted kind. Anyway, George Gordon Byron long ago expressed how I feel better than I or probably anyone else could.

Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.
This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a DOG,
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803
and died at Newstead Nov. 18th, 1808.

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,
Unknown to Glory but upheld by Birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below:
When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour’d falls, unnotic’d all his worth,
Deny’d in heaven the Soul he held on earth:
While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debas’d by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy heart deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye! who behold perchance this simple urn,
Pass on, it honors none you wish to mourn.
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one—and here he lies.

​I quit my job because I couldn't take it anymore. I got over my fear of rejection, then I was just bored, and then I was bored and hated people. The supervisors and work environment are as good as one could hope for, but the nature of the work itself is just ugh. And I knew it would be when I signed on, but I didn't realize I would find myself envying my statistics professor who had a college job in a Band-Aid factory counting the right number of Band-Aids into every box. I quit at just the right time as we started the worst project of my tenure there. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement about it, which makes it sound more exciting than it is, but that's why I won't be discussing it here. When my supervisor kept telling me to try not to sound like a robot, I thought she was just using a figure of speech. I didn't realize people might literally think I was a robot. I realized that on Friday when somebody on the line said, "This is a robot. I don't have time to listen to this." That seems like it should have really, really hurt, but I've always thought robots are cool and this job has given me far too low an opinion of humans for me to be upset that somebody thinks I'm not one.

When I look back on the first few weeks, though, and how awful they were and how I was able to endure minutes that felt like hours and fixate on the occasional silver linings and happy things, I see how God sustained me through them. It didn't feel like it at the time, but in hindsight I marvel that I ever made it through that, and it becomes obvious that He was there. I even drew closer to Christ as my dread of going to work made me reflect on how He must have felt before accomplishing the Atonement. But now that's not enough and that indicates to me that it's time to move on to something better, hopefully for my career path as well as my - I was going to say sanity but I've never had much of that to begin with anyway. My Christianity, I guess. I've said so many naughty words and made so many rude gestures at the phone that probably none of my co-workers would guess I'm LDS. I did get better at abstaining from that during the last little stretch. I should have tried harder to emulate my co-worker Sarah, who literally says "Naughty word" instead of a naughty word.

This week's post is a bit brief because a. I was at Bear Lake most of the day, b. the Church's wi-fi at this location sucks beyond belief and can't work for more than two consecutive minutes, and c. maybe more people will read it that way. The site looks a bit different, and will need some fine-tuning, because I learned how to edit the html to create a sidebar, which will give my Facebook page (which, incidentally, recouped all its lost likes after I gave it a shout-out last week) more prominence and allow a widget that tracks the locations of visitors. It only tracks them if they have those cookies activated, and I don't think it appears on the mobile version that most people use, and I don't have that many visitors to begin with, so it only shows a handful a day and kind of makes me look lame. But it was a neat idea in theory.

The search terms that people have used to find my website so far this month are:
​
christopher randall nicholson (9)
christopher randall nicholson about mormons (1)
content (1)
god is egotistical (1)
why are mormon missionaries so hot (1)

I have no idea who's been Googling my full name, but good for them. I'm glad people are stumbling on the site, but frustrated that after well over a year the pageviews are still sometimes lower than I like and that the top viewed pages almost never include any of my writing projects that I hoped to use to jump-start a career in that direction. Granted, since I can't get most of my so-called friends to read my novel for free I suppose I can't expect strangers to read my poems. What does one have to do to get noticed around here?

At least I think I've discovered what the problem is outside of the internet. The first few times I was monitored for quality control at this job, I was told to put more inflection and enthusiasm in my voice. After a bit of struggle I stopped getting that feedback and presumed that it had been resolved. But my overall rate of success is still lower than it's supposed to be, and whenever discussing this one of the supervisors keeps saying "Try not to sound like a robot." I had an epiphany and realized that if my monotone voice is the reason people say "Not interested" over the phone, it could well be the reason they say the same thing in real life. It's one of those little things that subliminally affects the way people see you even if they're not consciously trying to be jerks. I suppose I should work on it, but that's a daunting task since it comes to normal people as easy as breathing. They don't have to think about which words to emphasize, how much, and in what way. All I can think to do is trial and error, and that could go badly.

A couple weeks ago dreamed that Debbie was mad at me and refusing to speak to me. It was unpleasant and when I woke up from it I said to my subconscious, "Please don't give me dreams like that anymore." I went back to sleep and dreamed that I was a Jew watching the Nazis cook my grandfather for dog meat. I made a rather tasteless wisecrack about it to my father too, which hopefully was just a coping mechanism for the trauma.

​Anyway, after that I guess my subconscious felt bad and decided to make it up to me. The other night I dreamed that this song was being performed in sacrament meeting. Halfway through one of the refrains I started to wake up, and I thought “Wait, wait, let me finish!” and my subconscious allowed me to sleep for a few seconds more as I rushed through the rest. I first heard it last year at the Latter-day Voices Christmas concert, where the singers came down from the stage and spread throughout the audience to provide an exquisite surround sound experience that sadly I can't replicate here even if you have headphones.

Well, I've finally been forced to accept roommates, but so far aside from the stuff they moved in and the severe cleansing of the apartment, I've barely heard or seen a trace of them. It would be difficult to overstate my happiness about this. It looks like we're all going to get along just fine. I only wish everyone were as quiet as them. On Wednesday, I believe it was, I was awakened before six a.m. by the construction vehicles directly outside my window going BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - BEEP and so on without ever pausing for more than fifteen seconds. I wondered, not for the first time, if I had died in my sleep and gone to hell. When I determined that this was not the case, I started contemplating murder. I'd like to know why it's even legal for them to do that. When I got up and went to work I could still hear them a block away, so notwithstanding my absurd sensitivity to noise I can't have been the only person who was bothered by it. Yes, I sleep with earplugs. Rant over.

I went to Olive Garden for the first time ever because this guy that I know through this guy that I know through Debbie invited like forty people there for his birthday. "I'm inviting more people this year," he said. "I just don't want to go over a thousand, but last year it only came to about three-sixty."

When he wasn't around I asked someone, "How -?"

"His family owns oil fields back east," they explained.

There's something beautiful about a rich person with a heart of gold. Money can be such a corrupting influence and it's beautiful to see someone who resists that and shows that having a lot of it doesn't make you a bad person. Think Mitt Romney versus Donald Trump. I hope to be like this when I become successful as well. Anyway, I went to this thing with Debbie and she wore the necklace I gave her, and another girl complimented it, and that put to rest my worries that it wasn't something she would actually want to wear. Going with her seemed appropriate because the host thought, maybe still thinks, that we're dating, which is immensely flattering to one of us. She told him that we're not but he didn't believe her. So I guess he thinks that we're dating but that she's embarrassed about it. So we all went and filled up three tables and the manager came out and talked to us and said, "I assume this will be separate checks?"

And the birthday man said, "Nah, just one." It was awesome.

​There was this guy, “John”, in my institute class that I thought was kind of annoying because he always seemed to be making comments and asking pseudo-questions just to show off how much he knows about the gospel. You can usually tell when people are doing that. When he bothered to cite the hymn number of “The Spirit of God” while mentioning it, that was just too much. One time he mentioned being an Aspie, and that explained a lot. I was annoying too before I learned to not talk. Here on my blog, where I do an awful lot of "talking", I still am. Three people unliked my Facebook page after my last post. I assume they were offended by my entirely true remarks about dating, or maybe just that I used the word "boobs".

​Then I went wandering at an activity and when I returned John was there and he asked, "Do you wander like me?" And then he started talking about "my disability". Of course, I already knew what it was and that it's the same thing I have, and I don't think of it as a disability, but that has nothing to do with positive attitude and everything with pride. So this word choice threw me for a loop but I immediately realized that of course something that impairs virtually every facet of my life qualifies as a disability. People who call it just a "difference", though well-meaning, are deluding themselves. Of course it has a few advantages. The two that I can think of are that it enables me to look down on most of humanity for the stupid and arbitrary societal crap that they follow, and that it gives me a unique writing voice. Being blind often gives one greater hearing, too, but that doesn't make it not a disability.

Sometimes I almost forget how hellish it can be until I hear or read someone else describe it. John talked about how he has no friends and no one who understands. I asked if he had any luck at dating, since I've heard rumors that some Aspies aren't forever alone and was curious whether he had discovered the secret. He's only been on one date and that was with a girl who asked him out first. "I don't think I'm ready for girls," he said. And I knew then that he was far wiser than I, because I had to learn that the hard way. Anyway, seeing him so vulnerable and stuff, I repented of having thought he was annoying. I decided to invite him to hang out with Debbie and her ilk after institute, because I knew that if anyone could help him, they could. I was like a shriveled, wilted flower before Debbie poured the sunshine and water and fertilizer of platonic love on me so that I could bloom in full splendor. She noticed my redeeming quality and brought it to the forefront.

So I invited him and promised that he would fit in and be treated like a person. I didn't mention his situation to anyone, not wanting to give them any preconceived notions before they met him. And I hoped that I hadn't made a terrible mistake. What if they let me down? What if he was different, and they would treat me that way but not him? Not that I thought they would be mean, of course, but I just worried that they would be less enthusiastically inclusive than I had promised. It did get off to a rough start when he asked Debbie a question and she didn't answer because she didn't hear him. My heart was stung on his behalf. Been there, done that. It shouldn't feel personal but it does. After all was said and done, though, he said maybe I could understand how much it had meant to him, that he had felt like he fit in better than for the longest time, and that he wanted to try again sometime. That was convenient because after he left but before I left, Debbie's friend who I really should get around to giving a pseudonym by now since he's my friend too, and shall therefore take to calling "Greg", asked me to see if he wanted to come next time.

I feel like I should have been doing things like this more often throughout my whole life, but I've typically been the one in need of support just to get by, and not in much of a position to extend it to anyone else. It's a nice change. Actually, most of my emotions are kind of dead at this point - foul play is suspected - so I didn't really feel much sorrow for him or much warm fuzziness after helping him out. I just did it because intellectually I knew it was right. I guess that makes it as purely selfless as a person can get, and there better be some huge blessings in store for me. Just kidding. Totally kidding.

One day a few months ago a girl in Sunday school commented, "People always talk about 'having a relationship with Christ' and I never understood how. I thought, I talk to Heavenly Father in prayer and then the Holy Ghost talks back to me. I don't talk to Jesus, so how am I supposed to feel close to Him?"

I was astonished that someone was saying so exactly what I had thought for a long time. I assumed there was just something wrong with me for not getting this concept that other Mormons apparently consider so obvious they never bother to explain it.

​She continued, "Then I took this institute class called 'Jesus Christ and the Everlasting Gospel' and I finally understood."

So, based solely on that recommendation, I took the class. It's one of the new required classes for graduation but I didn't have to take it since I started the program before that. In fact I'm pretty sure I met the graduation requirements three years ago and just keep forgetting to do the paperwork. Anyway, this class fully lived up to my hopes. It ended last week and I found that not only was my Savior more real and tangible and personal to me than ever before, but I had regained a testimony of God's love overall, which I lost a long time ago and thought was gone forever. I couldn't honestly be more than an agnostic on that point, notwithstanding how crucial it is to the framework of everything. Anyway, it would be impossible to encapsulate everything covered in the class or convey the same feelings in this little space, so I'll just say that everyone who has the opportunity needs to take it.

Lately I don't have much to say about these songs, but they speak for themselves, don't they? Here's another that I think is just beautiful. Hence I picked the long version instead of the one with an actual video to it. I love the super mellow discount wolf howls that put Shakira to shame.

Here is a story from the evolution of my novel "Space Girls" that will probably be of interest to me and no one else. I haven't made a lot of changes to it this year because Debbie has a copy which she will hopefully someday get around to finishing reading and providing feedback on, and I don't want her feedback to be no longer applicable when that time comes. Besides that, I'm more pleased with the current incarnation than ever and don't have nearly as many ideas to improve it. But I did make a couple changes recently. One was prompted by hearing Casey Kasem, on a rebroadcast of American Top Forty: The Seventies, mention a town called Escanaba, Michigan. I decided that sounds much cooler than Traverse City, so I replaced both of those brief references.

The other was prompted by learning that military trials do not have juries. I have a military trial in the story, and though I haven't worried too much about perfect accuracy in military stuff because it takes place nearly a century and a half from now and anything could have changed by then – in fact, it definitely has changed since Earth has one united military which in turn is a subset of the United Worlds (a not-so-veiled jab at the United Nations) military – I thought it would make more sense that way anyway. So I deleted the jury spokesman and gave all his dialogue to the judge. Then I started changing it accordingly from "we (the jury)" to "I". But then I realized it actually looked kind of cool to have the judge still saying "we", as if she thought she were British royalty. So I changed it back and I think it gives a neat little dimension to a character that only exists for approximately one page. Perhaps she is just a teensy bit drunk with power and just a couple fries short of a Happy Meal.

​People have been very rude to me in my job this week. I mean the people on the other end of the phone, not my supervisors or co-workers, who are awesome. I don't get nearly as much abuse as the folks on swing shift who call residences, of course, though I have reached residences by accident sometimes and been called some names that bring back not-so-fond memories of middle school. One guy halfway across the country threatened me with physical violence, saying, "I'm going to bust you in the head, you dumb..." and here I could practically see the gears turning in his primitive little brain as he struggled to find a word before finally settling on one that didn't even match my gender. I was quite amused, and if he hadn't hung up I might not have been able to resist responding, "Well, go ahead, don't keep me waiting."

​People in businesses, of course, aren't usually that overt, but it is amazing how much passive-aggressiveness they can fit into their voices, and the smaller the business the more overt they're comfortable being. Or they just hang up without saying a word or letting me finish my spiel. I don't know, maybe I'm just weird, but I think taking a five minute survey for a ten dollar Amazon gift card sounds like a pretty sweet deal. If they're accustomed to getting more than two dollars a minute then I want in on that. In any case, I'm sure none of these delightful people have any qualms about reaping the benefits of the market research they hold in such contempt. I'm often reminded of the story with the little red hen and all the farm animals who said "Not I" over and over until it was time to eat. Of course I'm not allowed to be rude back to them, but that doesn't stop me from taking pleasure in their annoyance if they deserve it. For some reason, it's absurdly satisfying to say "Have a nice day, ma'am" when what you really mean is "Go sit on a cactus. Oh wait, sounds like you already did."

As it turns out, my assumption that Debbie doesn't bother to read my blog was correct. She only read part of the one post that I showed her and no more. So I could fearlessly say whatever I want about her in this space. I could say, for example, that the other day I watched her throw away a plastic bottle in a garbage bin that was literally right next to a recycle bin. It made me sick. It was an accident, but still.

Our fifth Sunday lesson was given by a member of the stake presidency and his wife, and it was about dating. Stuff like this only happens once in a while. The cliche of Mormon culture being obsessed with dating has, for the most part, not held true in my experience. I only hear the word brought up once every couple months or so, and then usually as a punchline, following the logic of "Dating sucks and everyone hates it so let's release the tension by laughing." This lesson was no exception. I came in late, but didn't miss anything, because they had just finished making a list of what men want in a woman, and I don't need to know that. Then they made a list of vice versa. And when it was finished they said, "See, the guys didn't put 'beautiful and thin' on their list and the girls didn't put 'has huge muscles' on theirs. Sometimes what people want isn't what we expect." I thought, Well, of course not. None of the guys said they like boobs either, but I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that.

They read some notes/questions that apparently they had solicited from people at some point, and it's just as well that I missed whatever that point was because mine would have included words unsuitable for Sunday school. From the guys they read stuff like, "I've been on thirty first dates and no seconds. Girls just don't seem to like me." Everyone collectively said "Awww." I thought, There goes someone who is technically more successful than me, but still I pity him more because that's probably a few hundred dollars he'll never get back. From the girls they read stuff like, "Why has girls asking guys out become the norm?" I thought, Karma. They then erased the lists of desirable traits and started discussing creative date ideas, conveniently sidestepping the issue that had just been raised of what to do if no one likes you. And these ideas were decent. Happy Meals in a canoe do sound fun. But none of them sounded any more compelling than staying home alone, writing and listening to music, which is a lot less trouble.

Actually, from the moment I started asking girls out, it felt like reading someone else's script. It was written without my input or consent and I'm expected to follow it just because I was born. That's not even getting into how millennial Mormons have turned it into a train wreck. I told Debbie that there must be ways of getting married besides dating, because dating is a very recent invention. She said no, that dating is really just about getting to know someone. So as not to sound like an advocate for this sort of thing, I refrained from pointing out that getting to know someone before you marry them is also a very recent invention. She said she defines a date as "planned, paired off, and picked up", which as you may recall is quite similar to the definition Elder Oaks suggested except that "picked up" replaces "paid for". She obviously failed to realize that by this definition we were on our fifth date, and we'll be on like our twelfth tonight. Another time she remarked, "Other than the worry about being raped, dating is so much worse for guys." And she listed all the reasons why. And I smiled and felt so good to not be involved in it anymore.

Most people in the class agreed that going to a movie is a horrible idea for a date. I don't think going to a movie even counts as a date anymore. Some time ago I asked my friend Cece to go see "Freetown", which I watched once at a free premiere screening and twice for money so as to support the low-budget independent filmmakers in their righteous endeavor, with me. She said yes. Afterward we went to her boyfriend's apartment and he asked, "How was the movie?" and I had to be like "Well, I would be glad to tell you, because Cece wouldn't know, because it turns out that when she says 'noon' she actually means 'four'." Communication is very important in any relationship whether romantic or not. And that's all I have to say about this lesson, except that it was better and more entertaining than my cynical commentary would suggest, and the advice offered could probably actually help normal people. In conclusion, the presenters acknowledged that dating sucks but promised that it's all worth it when you get married. They should have said "if". Because it is an "if". And if you're one of the people who doesn't, it's not worth it at all.

I watched some Strong Bad emails today for the first time in years, trying to find the best ones to show Debbie, who has never seen them, so here is a beautiful mashup of him and Daft Punk. I downloaded this entire album.