Pope Francis coincidentally died the day after a meeting with the anti-Christ's vice president. Trump was upset that the funeral wasn't about him, and so was everyone else. The late Pope was one of the earliest cracks in my Mormon testimony because I found him far more inspiring than my "prophet," Thomas S. Monson. I was not very impressed with Monson's stories and platitudes. I think Francis revolutionized the culture of Catholicism in positive ways, if not the actual teachings, but I'm no expert on that. I have one hardcore Catholic Facebook friend. I added him years ago because he said he was trying to build bridges between Catholics and Mormons. It turned out he actually was trying to convert Mormons, so that was kind of a dick move. Anyway, I sometimes see him expressing strong opinions about points of Catholic liturgy or doctrine that I'm quite certain have as much eternal significance as whether Spider-Man could beat Superman, and it's weird, but I'm sure I sounded similar when I talked about Mormon theology that can be directly traced to a nineteenth-century treasure hunter plagiarizing other people's ideas.

I was a little more affected to learn of the death of Deserae Turner-Buck. I talked to her only briefly when I met her in a Mormon Institute of Religion class almost four years ago, but she was semi-famous for surviving attempted murder via gunshot to the head. She had health problems and a reduced life expectancy, but she wasn't supposed to die at age 22. She had stomach cancer and a lung infection. I have no idea whether those can somehow be traced to getting shot in the head or are just incredibly unlucky coincidences. In her final interview, she said she was tired, had chosen not to fight, and wanted to let her body go. "Death is scary, not gonna lie. Everybody is scared of death, and... yes, I guess I am scared a little bit, but I also just want it to come quick, come for me and be done." Damn.

Something I wrote about her in my recent book, Goodbye Mormonism, Hello World, has now been resolved:

That, I'm sure, is how any still believing Mormons who know about this blessing will rationalize its lack of results. If you think that sounds like a really lame copout, you are so right.

My dog, Milo, died over eight years ago. I wish I could have been with him at the time. On Tuesday morning I had a dream about him. I believe this dream was influenced by the spiritual things I study and by getting the best high of my life on an empty stomach on Sunday evening, so its real world significance is up for debate. I'd like to think his consciousness was literally visiting mine, but I won't know anytime soon. Basically, in the dream, I realized that Milo wasn't dead, he was right here. We were on beautiful forested hills above a lake. I stayed pretty stationary while he romped all over the place and peed on things. Some other guy (whom I want to believe was some kind of spirit guide) was there with a rabbit. I couldn't describe the guy if my life depended on it, but the rabbit was big and shaggy and the same colors as Milo (brown and black). I kept expecting Milo to chase it, but he left it alone. Then he pooped in the lake, and then he went right behind me to shake himself off. My first reaction was annoyance that he had all this space and chose to shake himself off on me, but it quickly gave way to amusement. And then I realized my back actually felt wet. The contrast of this real feeling with the unreality of the dream caught my attention and left an impression on me as I woke up. I was, fortunately, not wet in real life. But I want to believe that feeling proved it was a real experience and not just a random byproduct of firing neurons.

On Friday, I protested for veterans - you know, those people that conservatives only pretend to care about during Pride Month - and then protested in front of a Tesla dealership. The latter was a lot of fun because we had a smaller group and a lot of people honked their support at us. I estimate we got a dozen honks for every middle finger, and even the middle fingers made me happy because I enjoy upsetting bad people. Even though I'm bad at emotional regulation [Everyone reading this: "Whaaaaat??"] and have few qualms about yelling, swearing, or using my own middle finger, my instinctive response was to smile and wave as if they'd honked. It was a fun way of saying, "Ha ha, I got under your skin, but you failed to get under mine, so suck it."

We also had four MAGAt counterprotesters right next to us, so I felt like I was risking my life. Three of them left us alone most of the time, just standing there with their DOGE flag and their pathetic AI-generated image of Trump and Musk trying to look cool. One of them mocked and harassed us quite a bit. He had a Tesla shirt, a Tesla vehicle with a DOGE flag and a DOGE bumper sticker, and a sign that said, "My Tesla drove itself here to watch Dems cry." The sign kept falling over because he was too lazy to hold it himself and just propped it against his vehicle. He managed to talk quite a lot, though, for someone with his mouth so full of Elon Musk's dick. I don't understand why people like him exist. It's like they're from a different planet. But then, lo and behold, a bit of common ground! The person next to me had a sign with Luigi Mangione's face and the popular quote, "He who saves his country violates no law." The billionaire-worshipping simp came up to them and said, "I actually really like Luigi. I work in healthcare, and I think he did a good thing." That didn't change my mind about the guy being a brainless douchebag, but it showed me that he had some redeeming qualities and some nuance. Maybe someday he'll figure out that Elon Musk isn't a better person than Brian Thompson was.

One of the other counterprotesters also came to the pagan gathering on the Capitol steps the next day. He had a sign that said something like, "Jesus Already Won, America Belongs to Jesus," but then he swapped it out for a Pope costume, confirming my suspicion that he was a lunatic. He attempted to disrupt the singing and meditating portions by yelling into a bullhorn. I'm not sure what part of his douchebaggery was supposed to put Christianity in a positive light, but it just made me want to burn a Bible.

The main purpose of the gathering was a "Hex the Fascists" ceremony. As I said before, I don't believe in witchcraft, but it was worth a try. I'm open-minded. This ceremony was no weirder or crazier than the Christian or Mormon rituals that people around here take for granted. The woman leading the ceremony wrote down categories of people to hex - fascists, racists, transphobes, etc. - but no individual names. The idea is that the hex will bring discomfort into people's lives as long as they belong to any of these categories, so they can be released from it if they change their ways. The woman chose every category carefully to avoid collateral damage - for example, someone suggested "narcissists," but she wouldn't write that because narcissism is technically a mental disorder, and she didn't want to punish people for having a mental disorder. That approach felt weird to me because coming from my background, when I prayed for something, I would expect God to know what I meant and not be pedantic about my word choices. I guess the energy of the universe or whatever works differently, though.

After the event ended, I got a quick free energy healing from another woman. I didn't expect it to do anything, but again, worth a try. I'm sure her energy healings have a similar success rate to Mormon priesthood blessings. It also started to snow right after the event ended, and she said that was because she'd asked "the ladybugs" for good weather during it. I'm sure her requests to insects have a similar success rate to the prayers I used to say to Heavenly Father.

I hope to get back to writing about things besides protests. On Tuesday night, I dreamed that I died. It was clearly influenced by my Delta-9 trips and my studying of NDEs, but I've never had a dream like that before. My dreams rarely have any clear correlation with what I experience or think about while I'm awake. In this dream, I understood that I was either reliving my own past life or experiencing someone else's through their eyes. I understood that I was Jesus waiting to be beheaded. Then I remembered that Jesus wasn't beheaded, so I decided maybe I was John the Baptist. Also, the year was 1970. Jesus/John the Baptist was executed in 1970. I understood that to be a quirky bit of trivia, like the fact that samurai coexisted with Coca-Cola or the fact that Christopher Lee witnessed the last execution by guillotine in France.

I felt no fear as I waited to die. I wondered if my consciousness really would continue, as my studies have given me reason to believe, or just fade to nothing after all, but I figured my death would be over quickly in any case so I didn't need to worry about it. As my head was placed in position on the paper cutter thing, I kept myself calm by playing this song in my head and mouthing along to it.

I didn't notice the blade come down, and I didn't feel a thing in my neck, but I understood that I was dying or dead when I started to feel funny. This was the point where I would expect to leave my body and float into a dark tunnel, and I felt a bit of anxiety, but it was quickly drowned out by a warm, peaceful, pleasurable feeling in my chest. A series of outlines of people's faces flashed by, like one of those spinning lights that makes shadow pictures, and there might have also been a dog, but I might have added that later as I was going over the dream in my memory. Then a black-and-white image of a young kid with bushy black hair lingered for several seconds. I thought, Who is that? My daughter? I wanted her to be someone significant to me because if she was just some random kid, then all of this was probably just random nonsense and not as profound as it felt in the moment.

The pleasure in my chest was so intense that it woke me up. I thought I might actually be dead, so I checked for a heartbeat and couldn't find one. I checked several times. I told myself that I wasn't finding it because I didn't want to find it because I wanted to be dead. Eventually I realized that I probably wasn't dead because I had to pee. The feeling in my chest happened again later that night for no discernible reason. The next day I wondered if I'd had a heart attack, especially since my chest has occasionally felt tight or achy for a few months and I haven't talked to a doctor about it because I live in the United States, but I can find no indication that pleasurable heart attacks are a thing. It was more like a heart orgasm, frankly, but I don't think that's a thing either.

I don't know why this happened, and I wondered for a bit whether it was a spiritual experience or just a nonsensical dream. Then I thought, ¿Porqué no los dos? I don't think it was a message from God or the universe per se. I don't think there's any profound hidden meaning in me being Jesus/John the Baptist or seeing that kid. But the feeling was real, and it uplifted me and made me comfortable about dying, so does it really matter why? I'll take what I can get from what life gave me for whatever reason.

Incidentally, he and his wife had been separated for years. I wouldn't imply for a moment that everyone who's separated from their spouse is evil, but it's stupid that his very few defenders think having a wife who didn't love him is a point in his favor. And his kids will get over it too. They're set for life. They'll never suffer the deprivation that his victims did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of vigilante violence. In an ideal world, it wouldn't have been necessary because he would have been executed by the state after a fair trial. Scratch that - in an ideal world, he never would have profited from human suffering and death in the first place because the United States would have universal healthcare like every other developed country that exists.

Of course, one man's death doesn't fix the systemic problem that is health insurance companies, but I bet it will make his successor and other CEOs think a little harder about the way they treat us peons. If they didn't notice before how normal people feel about them, they absolutely have now. We can see from the effort that went into finding his killer and the absurd decision to charge him with terrorism that this one death has rattled our oligarchic overlords more than all the schoolchildren being mowed down every week in the United States (including on the same day). I've had it up to my eyeballs with obscenely rich douchebags doing whatever the hell they want, and it's only going to get worse in the immediate future now that the richest one of all has bought all three branches of government. President Musk, with the help of First Lady Trump, is going to give them even more tax cuts and repeal the few regulations that keep them from screwing the rest of us even more than they already are, and morons who've been brainwashed into thinking that people on food stamps are the source of their problems will cheer them on all the way. Brian Thompson's well-deserved removal from this planet is a small sliver of comfort as we head into that bitter reality.

So yeah, this is about as un-merry as I've ever felt during the Christmas season. The other reason is that there's no snow where I am. I think we've had snow on the ground for less than a total of twenty-four hours so far. It was fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. And this after I moved here just in time for a record-breaking heat wave that lasted a month. Tell me more about how climate change is a hoax. The good news is that my memoir is coming out by the end of this year. It's called Goodbye Mormonism, Hello World: My Slightly Pretentious Search for the Truths of Life, the Universe, and Everything. As you can guess, it's about my religious deconstruction and spiritual journey. I keep it focused on myself so I'm not preaching or telling people what to believe, but I wrote it to help people, and I flatter myself that it's more important now than ever. I'm really pleased with it. And because it has Mormonism in the title, I bet it will sell better than my first book.

I had the best experience yet getting high last week, but I'm not getting high today because I've decided to take a break for at least two weeks so I don't destroy my brain's pleasure center. Some of my family members are wary about me using drugs, and some people get addicted and get into worse drugs and ruin their lives and stuff, and I ought to be more cautious about that. To be clear, though a part of me does enjoy telling people I got high because it's taboo and "bad," I don't do it for pleasure or to escape from my unpleasant emotions. I do get pleasure and escape from my unpleasant emotions, and I won't apologize for that, but I do it for spirituality. And though I can't prove it, I think the intentions and the preparation that I've brought to this have shaped the experiences I get out of it and made me less susceptable to the potential pitfalls. I came for spirituality, and I got it. I use the drugs as part of my journey, not a crutch or a shortcut. But drugs are not toys, and I'm sure they're not right for everyone even if they're right for me. I'm not encouraging anyone to use them.

This last time, I felt like I was in contact with the spirit world, reaching out to other people's consciousnesses, people I used to know and people I still know, learning about the plans we'd made in the premortal existence, apologizing for how I'd wronged them. I spoke to them with my thoughts. I'm sure none of them heard me. I'd love to know if any of them felt anything at all. I also got an impression that I might die in three days, and then I felt like I was pleading my case to some unseen, unheard personage (not God, I don't think, but maybe, who knows) about why I needed more time and could do so much more to bless people's lives while I'm here. I didn't die in three days, but I don't think that was ever really going to happen. I feel like I just needed to prove to myself how much I want to be here. (For now. After I do die, I sure as hell don't want to come back.) Even though it was just my own brain talking, it felt like a revelatory experience. I'm well aware that I might have just been delusional, but I've already lost much of my fear of death, made peace with a very traumatic past event, and made positive changes in my life as a result, so maybe the world could use more of that kind of delusions.

And I had another little psychic moment that helped to validate the experience for me. I'm not making any real effort to get a girlfriend, but once in a while I'll get on Bumble and swipe for a minute. I can always see that a few women have swiped right on me, but I can't see who they are because I won't pay for Premium, so I just have to hope I'll stumble across them in the natural course of things, which rarely happens. This time, I looked at the first woman who came up, reached out to her consciousness, and somehow found things to say about her profile for fifteen minutes or so. During this time I came to an implicit understanding that she had swiped right on me. And finally I was like Well, I'll feel pretty stupid if she didn't swipe right on me. I swiped right on her, and boom, we had a match. And then she never messaged me, but it was still cool. I also telepathically thanked a woman who had stopped messaging me for briefly coming into my life to tell me I had "the most soulful eyes." I also gently telepathically scolded a woman from Ukraine who said she was "apolitical" even though one American party supports her country and the other does not. I was nice about it, but I was in tears as I pleaded with her to take more civic responsibility.

I debated how much to share because this is my special personal experience that doesn't need to be broadcast to the world, but I do want to share things that might benefit and uplift others in their own spiritual quests. I decided to err on the side of not broadcasting it because I'm too lazy to try to describe this experience in words. You'd never be able to feel its intensity through words alone. So I'll just mention one more thing. I got the real or perceived revelation that Donald Trump chose to play a villainous role in this life so that others could have the opportunity to exercise moral goodness by fighting against him. Obviously I was inspired by the claims of near death experiencers that this life is like a play and we're all just performing roles. Whether my insight into Trump is objectively accurate, I can't say, but it makes me hate him less, so I'll stick with it. I thought, I hope I'm not a villain. And then I immediately thought, I am to some people.

I haven't been planning in advance what to do while I get high. I've just done what came naturally. Last time, I ended up listening to music and having a wild dance party for most of the time. Right there in my room, with little space to move around, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was in other locations, mostly in outer space surrounded by animated characters inspired by the cult classic "Rock and Rule," dancing and surfing and playing air guitar. I can't explain how it felt. It didn't feel real, but it felt intense. I could feel the floor beneath my feet, and the door and the furniture when I bumped into them, but they felt more disconnected somehow and didn't intrude on the illusion that my body had dissolved into another realm. I enjoyed the music more than usual and did a lot of cool moves because the drug raised my confidence, my skill, or both. I tried to alternate between fast rock songs and slower, more introspective ones to see what would happen, but I think I could have gotten results from any song. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to stop and go to bed, but at quarter to midnight I just decided it was time to wrap up, and I did.

At the same time I was enjoying myself so much, I had what seemed like a revelatory experience, though I didn't think for a moment that God was talking to me. Part of my consciousness became independent and addressed the part that was having a dance party in space. It was like, "You haven't overcome your fear of death. It's still there. You're kind of a hypocrite, writing this book to help other people not be afraid of death while you're still afraid of death. Here are some things you need to let go of to help you prepare. It's okay, you still have time. It's a process. Psilocybin will help." And I didn't stop enjoying myself, but it seemed like my fear of death got dragged out into the open, and I felt it in a very muted fashion, like a dispassionate observer, just acknowleding it. I kept telling the other part of my consciousness, "I just want to know when. I hate not knowing when. Or how much it will hurt. I don't want it to hurt." You know, slipping away in bed sounds fine, but I could also break every bone in my body and die of internal bleeding, and I'd rather not.

I thought that if I got euthanized, at least then I'd control the timing and not be taken by surprise. But then people would be sad. I thought of a friend whose sister killed herself and how much pain that's caused her to this day. I thought of my youngest sibling, who hadn't responded to me on Discord for four days, and I wondered if he'd killed himself. I knew I would have no way to cope if that happened, but I would have to find out regardless. And as soon as I thought that, I heard the Discord beep, and I thought it probably wasn't him because I'd heard some beeps over the past few days that weren't him, but it was. I freaked out because I didn't/don't believe in psychic powers. Maybe the THC was just making me overreact to a coincidence, but my freaking mind was blown.

Here are the songs I listened to. I don't remember the exact order because I listened to some on Spotify, some on YouTube, one on Discord (where my sibling sent it to me), and one on an ancient technology called Windows Media Player.

I listened to this one again at the end because I just discovered it that day and it is EPIC.

I don't know why this one is unavailable on YouTube. It displeases me greatly.

In the original flash game, this music is so condensed that it only bears the most vague resemblance to a voice. It still sounds awesome. This version sounds EPIC.

This came up in my YouTube suggestions because I've listened to it before, and after I listened to it again, I realized how apt it was, since I had been thinking about my desire to not die. Get it? Hahahahaha. And no, this is not a Bee Gees cover.

This one, from a 1987 educational tape that I loved as a kid, made me imagine myself in a landscape of animated dinosaurs and real dinosaurs. It also made me contemplate the cosmic tragedy that dinosaurs suffered and died for millions of years without the mental capacity to ascribe any reason to the brutality and unfairness of their lives. Yeah.

This is the one my sibling sent.

Even though I don't believe in Jesus the same way I used to, this is a pretty song with a nice message. I thought it would be a good contribution to my drug-induced spirituality.