On one occasion, I took two Kush Kubes because they were stuck together, and I decided the universe wanted me to have both of them. On another occasion, my first Kush Kube didn't have as much of an effect after a while as I'd hoped, and I supplemented it with another one. With those exceptions, though, I take only one each time. Conventional wisdom would suggest that my body would become desensitized to the drug, and I'd be tempted to take higher doses to achieve the same high. That doesn't happen. If anything, the intensity of the highs have trended upward, and the last couple of times were so intense that I've decided to take a break for a month. I picked a month because I'll want to get high again when I'm home alone on Christmas.

I have no regrets so far. Psychedelics have given me the most spiritual, pleasurable, and peaceful experiences of my life. Even these last couple of times, which included some fear and paranoia, were awesome and totally worth it. Best Thanksgiving ever. It was like being strapped to a rocket, even more so than usual. I lost more control than I'm used to - or did I only lose the illusion of control? There are philosophical and scientific arguments to be made that free will is bogus, so maybe psychedelics help me see that I'm just a puppet. Then again, I tend to write weirder texts to my friends when I'm on them, with full knowledge that they're weird and that my friends will find them amusing, so maybe it's not that simple. I wish everyone could feel what I've felt, and I know that I sound insane to anyone who's never felt what I've felt. I'm just taking a break because I don't want to die yet. I don't think one of these things could actually kill me, but I felt like I was going to die or at least have a stroke, so better safe than sorry. I wanted to submit to the experience, but not if it was a medical emergency.

Without any kind of neuroscience expertise, I assume the experiences are getting more intense because I'm permanently rewiring my brain, so each dose of the drug is building off what's already in my head. I do believe I'm permanently rewiring my brain because since I started, my depression has been drastically reduced, I laugh a lot more often, and I have more introspective thoughts without really trying. Again, psychedelics have been overwhelmingly positive for me, but look, I'm trying to be responsible and acknowledging that they're not without risks. I can go without them for a month. I can go without them whenever I want. I've found that my body craves them for a couple of hours ahead of time if I've decided I'm going to take one on a given day, but if I've decided I won't, it doesn't. Simple as that. Anyway, I think the "negative" aspects of my recent experiences are decent preparation for the scary but necessary parts of psilocybin trips. Psilocybin is my goal, the reason I got interested in psychedelics to prepare for death in the first place, but I'm also kind of scared, which is why I should prepare for that by taking as many Kush Kubes as possible - but one at a time, with sufficient rest periods in between.

I've found most of my roommates over the years annoying because I hate living with people in general. The last one I had in Logan was actually an asshole. The one who now lives on the other end of the basement from me and is always in her room or at work doesn't bother me much, though she is kind of a monster because she never lets her cats out of her room, which has no windows, and sometimes when she's at work, I can hear them mewing and scratching at the door. The one who moved in right next to me a few months ago bothers me a lot.

​Since I'm striving to have a spiritual outlook on life, I try to see him as an opportunity to practice love and patience instead of just stewing in resentment when he bothers me. I tolerate the little hairs that he sheds on every surface in the bathroom - yes, even the ceiling, God knows how. I carry my shampoo back and forth from the bathroom even though I should leave it in there without him using it. I didn't murder him when I found one of his little hairs on the underside of the lid of my mouthwash. I decided it's okay for him to use my cookware as long as he doesn't try to take it with him when he moves. I pretended not to know how to count when one of my cans of soda mysteriously went missing. But I broke a little when I went to make a sandwich and found my mayonaise like this:

Now, the best-by date of this mayonaise was July 30, so I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it before I didn't feel safe eating it anymore, and maybe it's a good thing that he ate half of it without asking. But I couldn't find a way to make myelf not enraged by the chunk of meat and the bits of sauce. What the hell is wrong with this guy? I have sincerely tried to figure out why he might believe it's okay to use my stuff and eat my food without asking, but this is objectively unreasonable by any standard. Still, even though I wanted to stab him, I retained my neurotic desire for him to like me - years of being bullied, ostracized, and ignored can do that to a person - which made me reluctant to call him out. I did anyway. I had to draw the line and stand up for myself. He was at work, so I just texted him this picture and said, "Please don't do this to my food," without a period because sometimes those make text messages sound threatening. And then I blocked him for a few hours because I didn't want to have an anxiety attack waiting for his response. I'm not proud of that, but baby steps, I guess.

​If my current beliefs are on the right track, then this guy is here to teach me love and patience, and we planned that before we were born. I'm trying to keep that perspective, which makes the loss of food that I spent my own money feel like less of a problem. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore objectively unreasonable behavior and let him infringe on my property rights any way he wants, but I can be nice about standing up for myself. I still hope he moves soon.

Sorry for the short notice, but there's an economic blackout to protest Trump from November 25 through December 2. I'm stocking up on food and withdrawing some cash. I'll probably go out to eat at the local taco truck and nowhere else. I just had Friendsgiving with some friends, and I plan to spend Thanksgiving proper at home alone getting high. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm really, really looking forward to it. My roommate with the cats will probably be here too, not bothering me. I hope my other roommate has somewhere else to go.

I don't expect anyone is using my blog as their primary source of political news, so I don't expect I need to go into a lot of detail about the things I want to get off my chest. First, the bad news. Democrats lost their balls and caved on the shutdown. I don't think it's the apocalyptic failure that some people are worried about, though. Maybe it will even be for the best in the long run. Republicunts were probably never going to negotiate on the healthcare subsidies, which would have expired in December anyway. Republicunts were willing to starve children to avoid negotiating on the healthcare subsidies. They. Are. Not. Good. People. And as the party controlling every branch of government and refusing to work with the opposition, they were responsible for the shutdown, and most Americans know it.

The worse news, for me, is that the funding bill to end the shutdown includes an entirely unrelated provision to close the loophole in the 2018 farm bill that allows me to legally purchase gummies with THC in them. I know my accounts of being high mean very little to the people who didn't experience them, but Kush Kubes have changed my life. I daresay they've permanently rewired my brain in good ways. I laugh a lot more often, I'm more introspective, and my depression is almost gone. After hearing this news, I thought I was depressed, but then I realized that I actually felt nothing, and I was just telling myself I was depressed because feeling nothing feels bad compared to feeling good, but as soon as I recognized and excised that thought pattern, I felt fine. This is the first time that the orange taint's presidency has had a substantial negative effect on me personally, but I didn't wait that long to start protesting because I care about people who aren't me. Anyway, there's still a year for the hemp industry to try to get this provision changed, and all drugs will be legal someday, and in the worst-case scenario, I'll just have to use real weed like most of my friends.

Good news: the Supreme Court paused its wholesale destruction of democracy and social progress to tell Kim Davis to fuck off. To me, nothing represents modern Christianity more than a woman who's been married four times trying to ban other people's marriages because they're against her beliefs. Because I don't believe in mocking people's physical appearances, I won't joke about how strange it is for such an ugly woman to be married four times. I was in college when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. I should have been thrilled about it, like other people my age. Instead, I felt sick and depressed because Mormonism had taught me that same-sex marriage would destroy society, and now it had definitively lost that fight, and society would label me as a bigot. I tried to tiptoe around LGBTQ issues on my blog because my religion's positions on them were embarrassing and clashed with my own conscience, but I couldn't admit that to the world. I will never forgive Mormonism for doing that to me. Let me be unambiguous now, much too late: I support same-sex marriage, I support this decision, and any sorry excuse for a god who creates gay people and then tells them not to do what makes them happy can go to hell. Of course, there's nothing brave about making this statement now. Most Americans support same-sex marriage now because none of the bullshit we were warned would happen has happened.

More good news: the Democrats released some emails they subpoenaed from Epstein's estate, which make his former best friend and current US president look even worse than he already did. The orange taint is crapping his pants. More than usual, I mean. As much as I wish he would die already, it gives me satisfaction to know that every waking moment of his existence is miserable. And I'm optimistic that this issue will destroy his presidency, despite his inhuman immunity to consequences for his actions, simply because of how very hard he's trying to keep those files hidden. This is the guy who said, accurately, ""I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters," so whatever's in the files must be... wow. The fact that the world's most notorious sex trafficker called him "evil beyond belief" in one of these emails could be a bit of foreshadowing. And of course, because I'm not in a cult, I want every Democrat who's implicated in these crimes to go to prison for life too. Dear MAGA cultists, in the unlikely event that any of you are reading this: the best time to abandon your orange Messiah was ten years ago, but the second best time is now. You will always be remembered for your mindless, unwavering support of the worst person in the world - sorry, nothing can change that now - but you can at least redeem yourselves a tiny little bit by drawing the line somewhere.

Or you can keep saying the emails are fake, like the dipshits you are. Whatever.

The 2024 election made me suicidal for a few days because I didn't want to live in a country so fundamentally rotten that it would choose someone like the orange taint as its leader, let alone twice. (My mother's response to this was, and I quote, "You could move to Costa Rica.") I still don't, and the destruction that the orange taint has wrought on crucial government institutions, human rights, human quality of life, and the economy has more than validated my futile warnings to the dipshits who voted for him. (I predict that in a few years, most of them will mysteriously forget that they ever supported him, but fortunately their Facebook and Twitter posts will set the record straight.) Even though his human rights abuses haven't affected me yet, and I can cope with him making everything more expensive because I've spent my entire adult life in poverty and have a semi-ascetic lifestyle, the last year has been hard because I suffer from a disorder called "empathy." I don't know why. It's not hereditary, that's for damn sure.

But at the same time, I've really enjoyed protesting and connecting with people who share my values and don't support Nazis, and my cautious optimism has grown as it's become clear that the orange taint and the ass-kissers he surrounds himself with are far too stupid to win in the long term. I've wanted to be optimistic all along, but I didn't want to delude myself. I don't subscribe to the delusion that the United States can't become a dictatorship because it's inherently superior to other countries. Naturally, I had a much more positive response to the 2025 elections, in which the orange taint's preferred candidates got hammered like Pete Hegseth at a 10 AM meeting. I believe this proves that Americans are finally done with his shit, and I believe it foreshadows a blue tsunami in 2026. Democrats obviously suck in their own ways, but because they meet the very low bar of not supporting Nazis, I'm rooting for them to curb-stomp Republicunts back into the 1950s, which is where they want to be anyway. Republicunts will, of course, try every voter suppression and gerrymandering tactic they can think of, and it will take hard work to overcome that, but they don't have the power to rig or cancel elections altogether. We now have proof.

I also believe Zohram Mamdani, the new democratic socialist mayor of New York City, foreshadows the Democrat Party being dragged kicking and screaming to the left and forced to actually fight for normal people and address the rot that runs through this country. Voters chose Mamdani over a mainstream Democrat, Andew Cuomo, first in the primaries and then in the general election when the latter ran as an independent and got endorsed by Trump and Musk because they knew the Republicunt didn't have a chance in hell. Cuomo previously served thrice as governor of New York even though I've never heard of anyone who likes him, he forced nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients and then intenionally undercounted the resulting deaths, and he resigned in 2021 over sexual misconduct allegations, which probably helped Trump and Musk accept him. ​On the other hand, Mamdani is a socialist with scary socialist ideas like checks notes free public transportation. You know, I experienced free public transportation for over a decade in the socialist hellhole of Logan, Utah. I don't know how I ever survived. The buses were always exploding, and people who owned cars were always complaining about having to pay taxes so that lazy freeloaders could get to work. Just kidding, Logan is very proud of its free public transportation, and when the city council considered charging fares, they dropped the idea after an overwhelmingly negative response.

Anyway, yeah, I know nothing is "free." I'm not stupid. I have to pay taxes regardless, so I'd much rather pay for socialist programs like free public transportation than for bombs that are used to murder Palestinian children. Most conservatives, excepting the most extreme nutcases who want to defund everything, have a double standard between existing programs and proposed programs. I don't hear them complaining about paying taxes so that other people can borrow library books for free, but if someone suggested that idea today, they'd lose their shit. But the narrative has shifted a lot within my short lifetime. When Obama (who's center-right by the standards of normal countries) was accused of being a socialist, it was an attack that he had to defend against. Now people come out and identify as socialists, and young people who are tired of being raped by our current system love them. I don't identify as a socialist, but I'm tired of being raped by our current system too. I'll take a socialist over a fascist every time.

The only position I got to cast a vote for was the mayor of Midvale. To my delight, Salt Lake County has ranked-choice voting, which should be the standard everywhere. Brandee Boyer was my first choice because of her focus on the needs of renters. Incumbent Dustin Gettel, a gay man who defied a bullshit state law and refused to remove a Pride flag from his office, was my second choice, and I wasn't upset when he won (though I was a little irked that all the incumbents won, which suggests to me that people didn't take this election seriously). David Fair was not a choice. With the option to vote for multiple candidates, I took pleasure in not filling in a bubble for him at all. At the very beginning of the candidates' town hall, it was a red flag that he wanted to expand the police force, and later, he was the only candidate for any position who said that he would have the police cooperate with ICE. Fuck ICE. The other six people basically said "Fuck ICE" in polite, professional ways. Anyway, I'm sure 2026 will continue to suck, and democracy will not have an uninterrupted string of victories, but there is hope. I believe I came to this Earth at this time to help at this critical juncture. I'm doing my best, dang it.

After I canceled my Spotify Premium subscription, I earned the right to encourage other people to boycott platforms that run the racist ICE recruitment ads. I did so in a Reddit post. I acknowledged that boycotting them all completely may be unfeasible; for example, I don't see how I can cut YouTube videos out of my life, but I do feel even less guilty now about using an adblocker. Monica Torres of the Huffington Post then messaged me and asked if I'd be willing to use my real name and talk about my boycott plans for an upcoming story. I agreed, but she never got back to me, apparently because she decided to use someone named Caroline Eddy instead. Oh well. I loved this line: "The company declined to answer questions about how many people have canceled their subscriptions over this ad." That means a lot of people have canceled their subscriptions over this ad, and the company is embarrassed. The article explains why these boycotts are unlikely to be as successful as the Disney boycott that saved Jimmy Kimmel's job, and that sucks, but at least willing collaborators with secret police who kidnap people, shoot priests in the head, and tear-gas children aren't getting my money.

Speaking of fascism, I watched "Truth and Treason" this week. It's an Angel Studios movie about Helmuth Hübener, the Mormon teenager who (spoiler alert) was executed for sharing the truth about Nazi propaganda. Of course, as an ex-Mormon, he's still one of my heroes. The LDS Church deserves very little credit for his heroism. Its strategy in Nazi Germany was to appease the government and avoid drawing attention to itself. Just as Mormons in the US today support the MAGA movement with no cognitive dissonance, some Mormons in Germany then supported the Nazi Party and saw no contradiction with their beliefs. In both cases, I believe this represents an abysmal failure on the part of the church. My current religion, Unitarian Universalism, is also neutral on party politics, but nobody would think for one moment that they could accept its teachings and support Trump or Hitler. As a Mormon, I was supposed to be okay with worshiping alongside racist twats because "people aren't perfect" or some crap like that, but as a UU, it's literally not an issue at all.

So of course, the movie had to include Arthur Zander, Helmuth's fanatical Hitler-loving bishop. His character can even be framed as a powerful lesson for believing Mormons, as long as they lean fully on "people aren't perfect" and ignore their belief that God himself calls every bishop. The movie ends almost immediately after Helmuth's execution, so it doesn't cover the part where Bishop Zander posthumously excommunicated him for his treason against the government. I will say that it annoys me when critics say "the church" excommunicated Helmuth. It was literally just this Nazi bishop acting on his own. After the war, the First Presidency reinstated him. I really think that whole thing should have been mentioned in the credits where, in the typical vein of historical films, we get text blurbs about what became of the main characters. It also wouldn't have hurt to mention that after the war, Zander moved to Utah, coached youth soccer, and hid when historians showed up at his house.

In the movie, Helmuth talks about his hopes that when he shares the truth with people, they'll share it with more people, and eventually everyone will refuse to comply with the Nazi regime. That obviously didn't happen. It's difficult to see if his actions had the slightest effect on the regime. But he fought and paid dearly for his principles, and 83 years later, people are watching a movie about him and getting inspired. He reminds me of my own ambition in resisting my own fascist regime. I can't say whether my individual actions are making a tangible difference in this world  - I certainly hope so - but at least they're ensuring that I can live with myself when I die. Helmuth was also brilliant and full of potential, and I wonder what he would have accomplished if he'd grown up. It's tempting to think he would have deconstructed his way out of the LDS Church, but it's just as likely that he would have rivaled Hugh Nibley as an apologist and been the token German until Dieter Uchtdorf came along.