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.

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.

Speaking 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.

After 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.

​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?

The U.S. presidential election is in two days. It's been stressing me out for several weeks. I've considered suicide if the fascist jackass wins. When I visited family recently, I felt impatient and resentful toward my little cousins, and then I felt like a monster for having negative feelings toward little kids who adore me. I haven't been getting high to escape from stress, but this week I'll make an exception. I look forward to it. Truthfully, though, I think Harris will win in a landslide. And then, in this best-case scenario, Trump will go ballistic again, his supporters will become violent again, and people will die again. I don't look forward to that. But then the Republican cancer will either distance itself the MAGA cancer and become more moderate, or it will die, as it's deserved to from the moment it decided Trump was an acceptable candidate. That's a win-win. Oh, and the morons on the Supreme Court might step in and say Trump won for no reason, but they can't actually do anything if the executive branch just tells them to fuck off, right?

I believe most of my immediate family members are voting for Trump again because, despite claiming not to be Republicans, and despite hundreds of actual Republicans putting country over party and endorsing Harris, they can't get out of the mindset that Republican candidates are the lesser of two evils in every circumstance. I've mostly avoided the topic, except when I called out my mom for saying, "I could vote for Harris if she wasn't an idiot," as if Harris isn't Albert freaking Einstein compared to the demented toddler that she's running against. Intelligence aside, I cannot comprehend why self-proclaimed conservatives who spent my adolescence freaking out over Obama's government overreach would even consider voting for a guy who led an insurrection and refused to leave office, said that the Constitution should be terminated so he could stay in office, said that he'll be a dictator, said that he'll fix it so they don't have to vote again, said that he'll give cops unlimited immunity, said that he'll use the military against Americans who disagree with him (like me), and plans to replace tens of thousands of non-partisan government employees with people whose only qualification is loyalty to him. Seriously, what the fuck? I used to think my family members were smarter than that. The prospect that they aren't is very depressing and alienating.

I often struggle to reconcile people's political behavior with what I knew or thought I knew about them. This one woman I used to go to church with seemed perfectly normal and reasonably intelligent. She shared a ten-second clip of Harris that had very obviously been taken out of context and had scary music added. This brazen attempt at manipulating emotions would have insulted the intelligence of a third-grader, but she bought into it without question. This clip, in her mind, confirmed that Harris would be a dictator, so she needed to vote instead for the guy who said he would be a dictator. When people in the comments brought up Trump's behavior, she said she didn't believe the media's lies about him. In all seriousness, I can't wrap my brain around how adults are walking around out there and leading productive lives with the critical thinking skills of sea cucumbers.

My uncle, who doesn't like Trump as a person but leans right, goes on long political rants when we're alone together for a long time. It's fine. I get on political rants sometimes too for the simple reason that politics affect every aspect of our lives. I just listen and don't argue. He's not trying to change my mind; he just gets worked up. Last time, he said that Harris can't speak in front of a camera, which I know isn't true because I've watched several of her speeches and interviews. He said he hates it when people are called sexist or racist for not voting for her. I agree that not voting for her doesn't make you sexist or racist, but voting for Trump means you're either sexist or racist or have decided that sexism and racism aren't dealbreakers. Also, many of the attacks on her from Republicans, up to and including Trump and Vance themselves, are sexist and racist. But I think her sex and race are advantages overall. She's energized young people who weren't interested in voting for yet another old white man, and anyone who wouldn't vote for her because they're sexist or racist was already going to vote for Trump regardless. Her being a woman is not, in itself, a sufficient reason to vote for her, but given a choice between two candidates who were identical except their sex, I would pick the woman because shattering glass ceilings matters. I want my nieces to grow up thinking it's normal for a woman to be president.

My uncle said that Trump isn't worse than other politicians, he just doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut. He said one reason people support him is that they're fed up with the double standard. Democrats defended Bill Clinton when he had his sex scandal. I wouldn't know about that, since I was four years old when it broke, but I will say that at least he only cheated on one wife, and the double standard I see now is against Harris for being a woman. Because she's had sex ever in her life, she "slept her way to the top." Granted, if she were a Republican woman it wouldn't matter. My uncle thinks Trump will end the war in Ukraine and establish peace because he'll threaten to use nukes, and the world's dictators will know he's crazy enough to do it. Spinning his dangerous mental instability as a positive thing is certainly a take. I'm pretty sure Trump would end the war in Ukraine by giving Ukraine to Russia, just like Republicans have wanted to do for the last three years because somehow Russia has lobotomized them. Putin is not scared of Trump. Putin has his arm all the way up Trump's ass. Putin will manipulate Trump as easily as Harris does. Putin wants Trump to be elected. Every Instagram account with no face, no posts, and no followers is making anti-Harris comments.

A lot of Puerto Ricans have recently gotten pissed off and turned against Trump because a bully, I mean "comedian" at his Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden a week ago made a "joke" about Puerto Rico being a "floating island of garbage." Whatever works, I guess, but if his campaign's bigotry isn't a dealbreaker for you until it targets you personally, you're kind of a shitty person. I bet my family members wouldn't vote for him if he said something rude about Mormons. It cannot be overstated how unacceptable and disqualifying this bigotry should be. Economic policies aside, I could never in good conscience affiliate with such a profoundly discriminatory movement, and it baffles me that so many ostensibly good people can. It was bad enough when it happened in 1930s Germany, but nobody in today's world who made it past seventh grade has any excuse for not knowing better.