PSA: Here's a recent example I observed firsthand of how Russian trolls and bots manipulate millions of Americans who should have been declared mentally unfit to vote.

Reminder that my new memoir is out as an ebook on Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble. I want to talk some more about how much I love the cover. I was very disappointed with the cover for my first book. The artist ghosted me for weeks at a time and then turned in a half-assed job at the last minute. I can barely think about it, let alone look at it without getting depressed, and I'm not very sad about the possibility of AI crushing his dreams. This cover, on the other hand, is one that I'm actually excited to show people. It was created by my transgender ex-Mormon brother, the only member of my immediate family who won't be upset that this book exists. (On the other hand, my genderfluid ex-Mormon cousin was the first person who bought it.)

It's primarily based on a nightmare I had after reading Carl Sagan's Cosmos at the height of my existential crisis, which I describe in the book. It gave me an unsubtle visual representation of how much I didn't matter and almost brought me to tears. The Milky Way in the background is a touch I didn't request, yet it fortuitously happens to align with another bit that I mention in the book - namely, the time I was in Logan Canyon with friends looking at the Milky Way and thinking deep thoughts, and thanks to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, I was able to tell them that it's called the Milky Way because it came from the goddess Hera's breast.

We wouldn't have been able to put that on the cover anyway. The Milky Way looks, rather, like it's coming from Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, the exalted heterosexual couple that rules the universe in Mormonism. Heavenly Mother is cut off a little to subtly indicate her inferior status. She's not worshipped or prayed to, she's rarely talked about, and nothing is known about what she actually does. They're looking at me with disappointment, which is self-explanatory. It occurred to me just this week that they could also be considered a representation of my real parents. The latter respected my decision to apostatize (which I appreciate) and have never wanted to talk about it at all (which I don't appreciate), but I know they can't be happy about it because their lives revolve around Mormonism. I remember my dad's annoyance when his sister and brother-in-law left it, and I have no reason to think he's changed since then. "I thought they got it," he said. I feel the same way about my parents voting for a fascist with dementia who embodies the opposite of every virtue they ever taught me, so we're even.

The flying saucer is there because I wanted a flying saucer there. I have no real justification. I like science fiction. There's a chapter in the book about aliens, but it has little to do with anything else.

I've never felt less happy about the New Year. My country is almost certainly about to enter its darkest hour since the Civil War for no reason except that a majority of its voting citizens have no principles and are easier to brainwash than first graders. At this point, I sincerely believe the best-case scenario would be a bird flu pandemic disrupting President Musk's government and naturally selecting a big chunk of stupid out of the population. I'd rather not have a pandemic every five years, but oh well, at least I already have a remote job this time.

On the plus side, I beat the odds by living long enough to experience my country's death by suicide in the first place.

I published my new book on the last day of last year. I don't know how long I'll keep up publishing a book every year, but two is two more than I had two years ago. I could say a lot about this book, but there's no point because it's all in the introduction that you can read in the free sample.

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.

Content warning: I talk about breasts a lot. Not in general, but in this post, for reasons that will become clear. I also have no choice but to mention cocks.

Utah's uniquely gullible population has long made it the fraud capital of the United States. Almost immediately after I moved here twelve years ago, I got a text that claimed to be from Wells Fargo and requested my credit card number. I ignored it. A few days later, I saw a newspaper headline about this scam going around Utah, and I thought, "Wait, people actually fell for that?" Several years later, an Amway (more like Scamway) salesbro tried to recruit me after I sat next to him in a church foyer, and I asked all the questions and met with him multiple times because I was unbearably lonely. That was at the beginning of 2020. Then the funniest thing happened. So I share the following story not just because it's interesting, but as a warning to people who are dumber than me. Or just hornier. But that's kind of the same thing. Anyway, last weekend a profile by the name of Mary Chance followed me on Instagram, I followed them back, and they messaged me.

Of course I was immediately suspicious that a random French woman on the internet who looks like this would take such an unsolicited interest in getting to know me...

...but I couldn't immediately prove that the profile wasn't for real. I reverse searched a couple of their pictures, but all I got was different pictures of similar but different blonde women. I thought it was weird that they only had five pictures, all of them uploaded in 2021, four of them on the same day, the last one on December 25, yet lacking any kind of Christmas imagery or traditions that I'm familiar with...

...but on the other hand, that reduced the likelihood that a scammer had created this account and was still using it to scam people all this time later. It was probably a real account that recently got hacked. With that being the case, I feel a little creepy posting these pictures here, but anyone else who investigates the Mary Chance profile needs to be able to find this post. Here's another one.

More like Instascam. What I saw on the screen was almost certainly a prerecorded video. It was ridiculously pixelated, had no audio, and depicted a woman was very obviously not the same as the one in the pictures. I guess I was supposed to be too fixated on her upper torso to notice, or maybe the scammer just thinks all white girls look the same.

Our budding relationship escalated quickly.

I didn't used to have the slightest interest in women's breasts. Just like with Pokémon Go and Tiger King, all the hype only pushed me away, because that's the kind of person I am. I did like chicken breasts, though I was really more of a leg man. If I recall correctly, the first time I saw women's fully exposed breasts (not counting repressed memories from infancy) was in eighth grade Global Studies class. I heard the backstory later from veteran teacher Mr. Morrison. Allegedly, first-year teacher Mr. Twyman came to him and asked if he could borrow a video about Africa. Mr. Morrison said sure. Mr. Twyman just grabbed one. So we watched it in class, and we saw some kind of tribal ceremony with topless woman dancing. And I thought, That's it? Those tubes of fat flopping around are what all the other boys go crazy over? You've got to be kidding me. But that wasn't the most memorable part of the video. Some men dragged an obviously terrified goat to the front of the ceremony. The classroom got tense. Mr. Twyman reassured us, "It's okay, kids, the goat doesn't get hurt." That statement contained false or misleading information.

As a college freshman, I confided to a friend whom I'd persuaded to be my free therapist because she was majoring in Psychology that I didn't care about the size of women's breasts. Right as I said that, I noticed for the first time ever that she was rather flat-chested, and I thought Crap, she thinks I'm talking about her. But she just smiled and shared the wisdom that she'd gotten from some old man: if they're big enough to hold up a strapless top, they're big enough. A couple years later, desperately wanting to be normal, I borrowed some issues of Women's Health from another friend (who claimed to not know why they were delivered to his house), and I stared at the (clothed) breasts inside until I found them appealing. I still can't believe that worked. It didn't work when I tried it with... other things. By the way, I wasn't impressed with the magazine's mixed message of "You're healthy just the way you are, but also you should look like these hot skinny models."

So when the scammer calling themself Mary Chance asked if I would like to see their beautiful breasts, the truthful answer was yes. I hesitated because the religion I spent most of my life in taught me that seeing her beautiful breasts would be sinful and that I should exercise moral courage by lying and saying no. But then, the religion I spent most of my life in also taught me that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were good people, and it also opposed every major social justice movement in American history, and it also broke the law in multiple countries to conceal its hoarding of obscene wealth, and it also protects child abusers, so I have a hard time caring very much about its views on morality anymore. Of course that just validates orthodox members' certainty that I left so I could sin without guilt, and/or that I fell under Satan's influence as soon as I did. Hence my noncommittal response.

The only other person who ever wanted to see my nice cock was a guy I used to go to church with. I certainly didn't believe that a random French woman on the internet who looks like those two different people would take such an unsolicited interest in seeing it. So there's the trap. The scammer gets footage of my nice cock, then shares it to the internet and demands money to take it off. Of the internet, I mean. Except even if I had been stupid enough to take the bait, I would have been too self-conscious, so it wasn't going to happen. For context, when they said "Drop you cam" I thought they meant turn it off, so I did, and then they turned theirs off, and I used that as an excuse to sidestep the question about whether I wanted to see their boobs.

Best Chance, apparently. I actually thought it just a little odd that a French woman was named Mary instead of Marie, but that didn't quite rise to the level of red flag, and maybe I committed a microaggression just by thinking it. Not all Hispanic women are named Maria either. Anyway, we switched over to Skype, and the quality of the silent prerecorded video somehow became even worse.

Now that there was a confirmed 0% chance of Mary Chance being real, I wish I'd been wittier and more assertive. I wish I'd said, "Respectfully, Mademoiselle, your breasts are more pixelated than the ones that appear for about ten seconds in the Naughty mode of the 1992 computer game Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. As you can see, my video quality is normal for 2023, and sending you my high-resolution cock would hardly make a fair trade." Instead, I kept being nice and wishy-washy while the scammer kept being impatient and unhinged.

Sheesh, I haven't seen a fictional woman this horny since I had to read Carmen Maria Machado's stories for graduate school. I lied twice here. Skype wasn't frozen - though I thought the awful quality made that plausible - and my job interview wasn't for another fifty-three minutes, and it was over the phone. Except the scheduled phone call never came through, though the recruiter sent a screenshot confirming that she had made it, so that was the final straw for me with Republic Wireless. It served me well for a few years, but it turned to crap as soon as Dish purchased it. I did a few minutes of research and decided to switch to Mint Mobile. Though I can't yet vouch for its quality of service, it allows calling and texting over WiFi, a feature Dish got rid of that probably would have prevented my problem. It also has an online tech support chat, another feature that Dish got rid of. I can't imagine why anyone having issues with their phone might need a way to contact tech support besides calling them, and obviously neither can the brilliant minds at Dish. But here's the kicker: I'll now get 5 GB of data per month for $15 instead of 1 GB for $19.99. It will be really hard for me to even use 5 GB a month - no, I'm not going to say "Actually, it's gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience," even though I wish I could, because it wouldn't be true, especially since my neighbor gave me access to xfinity WiFi hotspots to make up for the internet going out after he didn't pay his utility bill - but that's the lowest amount Mint Mobile offers, and it's still cheaper, so I'm not complaining. The recruiter let me reschedule the interview, so I deleted the passive-aggressive comment I was going to make about her not calling me.

wHy DiD yOu Do ThIs To Me. So manipulative!

They had a rather odd work schedule for a hairdresser in Las Vegas, too.

dOn'T sAy AnY mOrE bAnAl WoRdS tO mE. I'm dying.

Mary Chance probably targeted me because I look lonely. They may have also noticed that I live in the fraud capital of the United States. ​I feel rather smug about how badly they misunderestimated my intelligence. If something like this happens to you, I hope you didn't need me to warn you that it's a trap, but if you did, you're welcome. Of course, in the near future, scammers will be able to use AI to generate flawless fake profiles with fake photorealistic images and high-quality videos that match and have audio and respond in real time. But they won't need to go to all that trouble to get footage of your nice cock, because they'll be able to generate that with AI too. I miss the good old days when the scariest technology was nuclear weapons.