I was finally motivated to get my phone screen fixed (again) so I could get the selfie camera cleaned so I could verify my age for OnlyFans. The next day, my little cousins called me on Facebook Messenger, and because I'd gotten the camera cleaned, I was able to entertain them by using the things that turn my face into a cat or Santa Claus. If I were still Mormon, I could share this story in testimony meeting as an example of how God orchestrates the little details of our lives.

I tried OnlyFans out of curiosity, not sure if I'd spend any money on it. Living through years of poverty and facing the prospect of more poverty after Trump's trade war and mass deportation increase the price of everything I need to survive (which most of my family members voted for, but whatever) has made me not like spending money. There are OnlyFans profiles that you can subscribe to for free, which seem to post pretty tame stuff. But I didn't expect that as soon as I subscribed to each one, I received automated messages from them, which turned into conversations geared toward persuading me to give them tips or purchase their less tame stuff.

Some of the messages were copy-pasted at the very least. Maybe all of them were AI-generated. It does seem odd for women in Serbia, Italy, and Ukraine to message me around four in the morning local time. The woman in Serbia said it was evening there, but I can give her the benefit of the doubt that she meant night. I can give her less benefit of the doubt for saying she'd been thinking about me all day. The woman in Ukraine didn't react at all to me saying that I hope she stays safe and her country wins the war soon, which I thought odd. The woman from Italy, at least, had an excuse for being up so late/early, and I could be wrong, but I work with AI for a living, and I don't think it's advanced enough yet to emulate the cadence and vocabulary she had from speaking English as a second language. To be clear, I know these are all real women, but I'm not confident that they spend their own time writing messages to nobodies like me.

Still, the attention was unexpected and pretty awesome. Even if they just want money, at least they want something from me, which is an unfamiliar feeling. I'm most inclined to give it to the Italian woman because she did the best job of pretending to care about me as a person. She said she does OnlyFans to supplement her income as a horse riding instructor and pay for her horses' vet bills. I respect that. Anyone who thinks this platform is immoral or exploitative or whatever should direct their outrage at the forces that have made it impossible for millions of people to live on one income. Attractive women are lucky that they have this option. Men do OnlyFans too, but obviously in much smaller numbers to meet a much smaller demand, and I'm clearly not attractive enough anyway. Years ago I actually did research on the porn industry (which was less fun than it sounds) and learned that here, the gender wage gap is reversed. Hooray, I guess.

Jokes aside, my former religion would shame me for talking to these women or their chatbots. My current religion couldn't care less. It doesn't try to regulate my behavior. It just encourages me to care for the planet and love everyone. Granted, I'm failing at even that much. I'm sorry, but it feels really, really, really good to tell a transphobic bully that nobody would miss him if he got hit by a truck, and I'm not sorry, so I lied just now when I said I was sorry. Anyway, this is a contrived attempt to segue into the next thing I wanted to mention, which is another difference between my former and current religions. Today, most of our meeting was devoted to commiseration over the shitty reality we're going to find ourselves in for the next four years (at least) and advice on how to endure it and keep hope alive. My chances of getting that from a Mormon congregation would be close to zero. The LDS Church only gets involved in politics when it's supporting legislation to force its beliefs on other people or exempt itself from child abuse reporting requirements, and I know if I were to attend a random congregation in Utah, I would be surrounded by idiots who are overjoyed that they elected the opposite of literally everything Jesus stood for.

I don't think religions should be politically neutral. They should stand up for human rights and social justice. Their teachings are just empty platitudes if they don't. In theory, they shouldn't speak for or against specific parties or candidates, but when specific parties or candidates are objectively evil, that's a dumb principle to maintain (except to the extent that they must, of course, to avoid losing their tax-exempt status). The LDS Church's partisan neutrality extended to appeasing the Nazi regime while some other churches opposed it. Anyway, I'm not looking forward to the next four years (at least), I don't know if I'll ever forgive my family members who voted for this because they have no principles and don't care if people who are different from them get hurt, and I'm definitely getting high tomorrow. But that doesn't mean I'm giving up. Here are two positive notes to end on.

First, MAGA Republicans, who are now mainstream Republicans, are the stupidest and most self-absorbed people on Earth. Trump and his cabinet picks are almost universally evil, but they're also so unqualified and have so many competing agendas that they may be unable to accomplish much at all. A total fustercluck of incompetence and infighting is the best-case scenario at this point. Elongated Muskrat has already backtracked on his pledge to cut a bunch of "wasteful" spending on programs that people need to survive, and MAGAts have already turned against him over a disagreement on H1B visas - he favors exploiting foreign workers for cheap labor, while they favor not letting any brown people into the country. Fuck both sides, but more power to them as long as they're fighting each other.

Second, the United States honestly deserves to lose a lot of its global power and influence. It's used those to do terrible things and ruin millions of lives, from its war crimes in Vietnam, to its installation of the theocracy that abuses women in Iran, to its recent funding of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Individual citizens who didn't vote for Trump don't deserve to suffer, but on a larger scale, it will be good if the country loses some of its ability to mess around in everyone else's business. And that's why I'm not even mad about Russia interfering in our elections. It's 100% karma. I'm sure the United States has interfered in more foreign elections than it's even admitted to. I know, I know, I'm an evil liberal who hates America just because I hold it to the most basic standards of right and wrong instead of worshiping it for no reason. 

My message to both of the people reading this is don't give up and don't give dictatorships more power by obeying them in advance like the media are. I've been criticizing the orange taint since 2015, and I'm not going to stop just because he might throw me in a concentration camp if he runs out of talk show hosts to persecute. I wish I had a wider audience and more influence, but this is what I get for choosing not to be a billionaire.

This exchange took place on a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed by a woman describing the intense misogyny she experiences in Utah.

There were a few reasons for me to virtue signal like this - to validate the author, to call out the jackass men in the comments who were already claiming she made it up, and to let women know that they have an ally. I know it's very psychologically draining for them to not see any men coming to their aid. People talk about virtue signaling like it's worse than actually being a bigot, but up to a point, I like it when people signal their virtues so I know whether or not I want to associate with them at all. Obviously people can lie, but in my experience, shitty people on the internet don't try very hard to hide their true colors, especially since the election. What a coincidence.

It's beyond pathetic that he took the time to write all that and pretended like he was speaking for a broad coalition of people. I was planning to present this comment here, without censoring his name, as objective proof that not every human life has value. But then: plot twist.

Now I have to give him the benefit of the doubt because I don't know much about fentanyl. I've only had enough experience to be confident that the safer and more legal drugs I use can't make me do, say, or even think anything that's against my values. I don't think they actually control me at all. They alter my consciousness and make my agency feel weird in a way I can't put into words, but I still do and say what I want to do. See, for example, the text messages I wrote to a friend the third time I got high. I let myself say weird things because I knew she'd find them hilarious, but I didn't say anything inappropriate or evil. Last time I followed a prompting to message an acquaintance from high school whose partner killed himself, and I didn't say anything weird. I didn't tell her I was high. I didn't tell her that while I was looking at Messenger, contemplating what to say, tears came to my eyes as I thought, He loved you so much. He never wanted to hurt you. He never would have done it if he'd known how much it would hurt you. Please don't be mad at him.

When I'm high, I feel more loving and more empathetic. For example, a while ago I had been arguing on Instagram with a Mormon teenager about the racism in the Book of Mormon. He had started it by making a snarky comment on an ex-Mormon page, and I wasn't actually rude to him at all. I stuck with dispassionate facts and logic. He stopped responding, which I took to mean that I'd won. But when I got high later, I felt so empathetic toward him. He was just a kid trying to defend his beliefs, and I'd probably caused him unpleasant cognitive dissonance that could potentially spiral into a full-blown existential crisis. So I said something conciliatory. Then he, for some reason, looked at my profile and asked why I supported Kamala, and I ignored him instead of telling that was a stupid thing for someone who supported a rapist and felon to ask.

I know alcohol lowers people's inhibitions and brings out more of their true selves. Good people don't become abusive when they get drunk. I had a friend who asked me to hug his fiancée while he was drunk. If Kush Kubes are the same, then my true self is love. I'd like to think so. I know that might sound far-fetched based on some of my blog posts. But look, I love people without regard to race, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or taste in music. I don't love people who hurt me or other people. I don't love Trump supporters because their idiotic choices are going to make my life and, frankly, most Americans' lives much worse. I don't love Trump supporters because they're either bigots and fascists or willing allies of bigots and fascists. That's a shortcoming on my part, but it's not hypocrisy. I hope to get over it someday. I know most people think they're doing the right thing. I know there are all kinds of psychological reasons why humans think rationally. I just don't understand why grown adults with unrestricted internet access are easier to brainwash than first graders, and I haven't yet found a compelling reason to not be pissed off by it.

After spending Thanksgiving alone - which was fine, really; I'm not asking for sympathy - I went to the mall on Black Friday to feed off human energy. Lo and behold, I noticed a kiosk that sells Kush Kubes, and they were $25, which is $10 cheaper than at the smoke shop where I got mine, and the lady said that was the regular price and not a Black Friday sale. I got two bags. I should have gotten fifty bags in case Trump's tariffs drive the prices up next month. She was going to let me have them without showing my ID, but I showed it to her anyway. I hope she remembers that in the future and doesn't get busted by an undercover cop. She had an accent, so she was probably from a European country where children are allowed to have Delta-9.

I talked to a Mormon friend while she was traveling, and like every time I talk to her, she asked with some amusement if I'd been on a trip lately. On the one hand, she's an orthodox Mormon with a literal belief in prophets and the Book of Mormon, but on the other hand, she's politically progressive, she doesn't always wear her garments (which I noticed by accident, I swear), she tolerates me sending her rants about the church, and she tacitly encourages my drug use. She was traveling to meet her sister's girlfriend's family for the first time. She said that in Utah she felt awkward about mentioning that her sister had a girlfriend, but she'd gotten over it and found people more accepting than she expected. We agree that same-sex relationships aren't a big deal. I mentioned the cognitive dissonance I'd felt as a Mormon being told that they were sinful even though they didn't seem sinful. She admitted that she's currently having that same cognitive dissonance. She used the term "nuanced" to describe herself for the first time I can remember.

I just thought that was cool. I'm happy for her. And I don't want her to have to leave the church if she doesn't want to, but this anecdote just convinces me even more that it will have to change to keep that from happening. She's not some uber-feminist who wants the priesthood or some cultural member who takes the Book of Mormon as inspired ficion. She's just a normal person who, even if she hasn't said these words out loud yet, knows that the church's positions on LGBTQ+ people are wrong because she's actually met LGBTQ+ people. The church will either become more or less hostile to people like her over time. Right now it seems determined to only cater to its most bigoted and closed-minded membersm. It seems determined to make its tent as small as possible. That might be a side effect of most of its top leaders being white men older than my grandparents.

In summary, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Next year will be rough. Enjoy the holidays while you can.

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.