This happened on Facebook about a month ago. I'd like to think I've gotten more humble since then, with General Conference and all, but not likely. As much as I think this is a terrible idea because people who choose to live in rural areas choose to live in rural areas for a reason and don't want somebody coming in and building a city next to them, I have mad respect for this guy actually giving a crap about the environment, unlike 99% of Americans. He has several researchers at work to make this thing eco-friendly. Also worth noting that he says he doesn't care what the leaders of the church think about his project because they don't control him. This comes as quite a shock, because everyone knows Mormons like me are brainwashed into following our leaders and incapable of thinking for ourselves. So anyway, of course there were some useless responses. I've noticed that, in addition to several other cultish buzzwords and cliches, anti-Mormon trolls really like the phrase "shred of evidence". It's almost like most of them are sharing the same brain, which would explain a lot. If only one of them knew what the word "evidence" means, he could tell the others to stop confusing it with "conclusive proof". Of course I'm usually not the type to make fun of someone's atrocious spelling, even if reading it makes me die a little inside (there's really no excuse for a native English-speaking adult without a mental disability to not know the difference between "you're" and "your"), but if that person is also being a jackass at the time, of course I will. I feel like being an atrocious speller ought to give someone a shred of humility. But that's just me. Still, I tried to have a little bit of humility by editing the words "equally brainless" out of my comment. That counts for something, right? Why did I opt for ad hominem instead of addressing his criticism? Because my time is too precious to waste on people who are pretending to be critical thinkers but are actually just being jackasses. I'm not stupid enough to think he would listen to anything I would have to say. He's flat-out lying when he says "then I would probably beilie them." There are literally hundreds if not thousands of geographical, archaeological, and linguistic evidences for the Book of Mormon (see here, here, here, and here, for example) and none of them have persuaded cynics to believe in it. It's a matter of faith, which is kind of the entire freaking point. Not blind faith, but bothering to actually read the book and ask God personally if it's true. I've actually never bothered to do that latter part because I already knew it was. It was just obvious to me. But if he was satisfied with "a shred of evidence that a hige [sic] battle had been fought there", he would just move the goalposts and demand something else. Don't even try to pretend he wouldn't. Critics have done it for nearly two centuries. Anti-Mormons: The Book of Mormon mentions people using cement in the ancient Americas, but there wasn't any cement in the ancient Americas! Ha! Joseph Smith was so stupid! Archeologists: Hey, we just found cement from the ancient Americas. Mormons: Oh look, there was cement in the ancient Americas just like the Book of Mormon said there was. Anti-Mormons: Uh, let's never mention this again because reasons. Now this other thing... Honestly, it blows my mind how people can be so asinine. But, for the benefit of readers here who may not be aware of it, the Hill Cumorah is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith never identified the hill in upstate New York where he got the book of Mormon as the Hill Cumorah, nor is there any reason from the text to assume that it is. But other people assumed that it was and that's what we call it now. Most of the people who examine the book for a living believe that it took place in Mesoamerica, where the vast majority of aforementioned evidences are found, obviously implying that the real Hill Cumorah is there as well. So we wouldn't expect to find anything important in the wrong place. I actually found this really funny because it was just so out of proportion to what I said. It really shows the depth of Curtis' critical thinking skills, you know? I can see why someone as intelligent and perceptive as him demands evidence. I'm the opposite. If I really am a better person for staying, I'd hate to think what I would be like as a non-member. I'm almost positive I would be dead or in jail. Facebook's "mic drop" stickers are limited to pretty much just this one, and the Salt Lake Tribune doesn't allow photo comments. Speaking of the Tribune, they recently had a slow news day and published a hit piece called "Does tithing requirement for entry into LDS temples amount to Mormons buying their way into heaven?" Such a timely and relevant article on such a recent development within the Church. Wait, no, it's the exact opposite of that. But I do also have several ex-Mormon friends and family members who, at least in person, are decent human beings. I respect them and try to get along with them despite our differences even if it doesn't always seem like it because of how vocal and strongly-worded I am in my opinions. So I felt inspired to make this meme in their defense and differentiate them from the trolls. The following criticisms are directed only at militant atheists, by which I mean those who make it their mission in life to destroy the God they don't believe in. I have no grievances with atheists who are willing to live in peace and mutual respect with people whose beliefs they don't share. I try to respect them as I hope to be respected (though of course, not being respected won't change my beliefs, religious or otherwise, one iota). Just recently, for example, I was with a coworker who said I'm her only friend at work and we were talking about our deceased dogs, and I asked "Do you believe animals go to heaven?" and she said "No, because I don't believe in heaven" and my first thought was "That's depressing" because, you know, that would mean she has no hope of ever seeing her dog again, but I stopped myself from saying that out loud because I realized it would probably be offensive. So there was a bit of awkward silence as I looked for something else to say, and that probably made her think I didn't like her anymore anyway. But I tried. I don't even care if atheists want to criticize religion. It certainly isn't above criticism. But they can do so while still recognizing that not all of the billions of people who disagree with them about the existence of a higher power are delusional idiots. Militant atheists can't be bothered with such basic decency and would rather keep perpetuating Americans' unfavorable rating of all atheists by making themselves as obnoxious as possible. So... I haven't read Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion". If his Tweets are anything to go by, I'm not missing much. I have read Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation", which painted him as an incredibly unlikeable individual, and reviewed it here. I have read parts of the late Christopher Hitchens' "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" and found it so full of unabashed, inexcusable lies as to be not worth continuing. Hitchens apparently took great delight in fabricating nonexistent quotes and facts, such as Thomas Aquinas saying "I am a man of one book" despite the reality that Thomas Aquinas never said anything of the sort and in fact cited all kinds of books in his writings. To say nothing of everything Hitchens got wrong about Mormon history. See here for a great review with several examples of his lies, which some atheists on YouTube have responded to with name-calling. But when you're a militant atheist, you see, the ends justifies the means. It's okay for you to make crap up because you're superior to religious people. So anyway, I get that I'm supposed to be intimidated by the allegedly superior intellects of militant atheists - Sam Harris says so explicitly in his book - but I'm not. At least Richard Dawkins made a recent attempt at appearing clever. Answers to Richard Dawkins' questions:
Yes No, all of them N/A (see previous answer; note, however, that I do not deny the existence of these hominids or the reality of evolution) No, all people are eligible Physically and mentally perfected me (Don't all Christians believe this, even if they don't believe in resurrection? Why is this even a question? It's like smugly asking an all-you-can-eat place if they provide chairs.) I mean, are these questions supposed to be clever? They took me literally thirty seconds to answer. I guess when you're a famous biologist who hasn't actually done biology in several years, you can write whatever dreck you want and thousands of your drooling worshipers will lick it up. He's an atheist, ergo everything he writes is just brimming with intelligence. Like when he advocated cloning human meat and eating it to overcome our "irrational" taboo against cannibalism. I really don't even know what to say to anyone who still admires him after that. Ironically, he's on record mocking Mitt Romney's beliefs as "barking mad" and yet, if he'd ever bothered to actually look at them, he might have noticed that they answer all of his stupid questions. But maybe not that ironic. When you're a militant atheist, you see, you don't need to understand something before criticizing it. All I see here is a sad, irrelevant old man whose nearly spent life revolves around trying to tear down other people's happiness. I'll pray for him.
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"We'll start the year off," the Sunday School teacher announced, "by talking about eternal marriage..." "...and families." Mormons believe in eternal marriage and families. Hindus don't. Once a Hindu friend said to me in regard to his fiancee, "Naw, man, I'm just lucky. If you'd've gotten here first, she would've been all yours. But there's multiple lives, man. You can have her in the next one." So I'm kind of hoping that my religion is wrong and his is right. Even though I'll probably be reincarnated as a cockroach or something. Because the topic was broader than just marriage, and because the bishop's wife was by the door, I decided not to get up and leave after all. At least this lesson, perhaps understanding the difficult situation some of us were in, reduced the discomfort by focusing more on the broader family thing. Marriage and associated stuff just came up now and again and I kept my rude comments to myself because I didn't want to drive the Spirit away and because the bishop's wife was by the door. "What's some of your biggest fears about marriage?" the teacher asked the class. My biggest fear about marriage was not appropriate to mention in that venue. "You've got to be all about that dating life; it's great," he said. I might have fallen for that lie if I had amnesia. "It might be worth it to drop a letter grade if you find your eternal companion," he said. It might indeed, but gambling is against my religion. I like families. I like having a family. I devised a comic strip about a family. If hell freezes over and I do get married, I'd like to adopt teenagers that nobody else wants. If he had asked what's my biggest fear about raising a family, I would have said watching my kids suffer from the unfairness of life and/or their own poor choices. I've suffered more than a little from both and the thought of a loved one going through the same crap makes is unbearable. If you think about it, this is why God suffers more than anyone - because He chooses to love all of us, He makes Himself the most vulnerable being in the universe. He makes that sacrifice for our sake. You know who I really want to see again in heaven? My dead dog, Milo. He was the best friend I ever had, he died in 2016 and recently I've dreamed about him a couple times. I'd even like to see my previous dog, Trillian. My dad shot her because she was aggressive and violent, but that will be fixed after the Resurrection and we'll all get along great. The young ladies next to me proved to be a bit of a distraction with their constant chatter. At one point, the one who reminds me of an aerobics instructor from 1989 (which, to be clear, is a compliment) started loudly messing around with some kind of pills or candies in her purse. I hoped they were candies and that she would give me some, so I stared at her until she noticed me. "I spilled my Ibuprofen," she explained. A likely story. Why would she need to carry around so much Ibuprofen? Oh wait, she's a schoolteacher. Point withdrawn. At some point the teacher jarred me into paying attention again when he said, "Family understands you like no one else." Let's see, one of my sisters understands me because she's the same way, another shares my love of Star Wars and Tintin, and the rest of my family is from a different planet. I love my parents, but they aren't even in the top fifty people I would be comfortable sharing personal things with. I guess you could say I can't relate to my relations. Oh well. On an average day at work, if I'm not doing other things, between one and three thousand books pass through my hands. Many of them are interesting, but few of them are memorable. So when people ask about interesting books I've seen I don't have much to say. But here are a couple I made sure to remember just for you! First, a children's picture book called "The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew it Was None of His Business", translated from German. I skimmed it while I was supposed to be working because I'm just that fast. In this story, the little mole pops his head out of his hole and immediately gets pooped on by some other animal, but because he's shortsighted he doesn't see which. So he goes around to each of the animals and asks if it was them, and they each say no and obligingly demonstrate that their poop looks nothing like what's on his head. I won't give away the ending because I know you're dying to read it and look at the illustrations for yourself. Next, another children's picture book called "Tricking Tracy". A less confusing title would have been "Tracy's Tricks" or "Tracy the Trickster" or "Lyin' Tracy Meets the Lion". Tracy is a little girl who pranks people by pretending to be stuck or hurt and yelling "Help! Help!" And I am going to give away the ending of this one because it shocked me. Tracy is with her classmates at the zoo and decides to prank them by pretending her head is stuck between the bars of the lion's cage (this was in 1983 when you could do that). She yells "Help! Help!" and her classmates are like, "Just ignore her. She's only fooling." On the next and final page, the narrator concludes "...but this time, she wasn't!" Terror is plainly visible on Tracy's young face as she realizes her head is stuck for real and makes eye contact with the lion, about three feet away, who's giving her what I can only describe as a lecherous grin. Carnivore by birth, sadist by choice. The end. Like, holy crap. That's the darkest children's book I can remember ever reading. And it's for young children, too. It's fifteen pages long with one or two sentences per page. Okay, so let's assume for the sake of argument that Tracy's implied fate is thoroughly deserved for her childish pranks. That still disregards her nearby classmates, shown on the previous pages, who are going to be scarred for life in a couple minutes at most. Or her family members, shown earlier in the book, who presumably love her. I can't deal with this. I have to write my own alternate ending for my own piece of mind. "Fortunately for our anti-heroine, a zookeeper who was unfamiliar with her trickery heard the shouts and came running. He was able to shoot the lion before it harmed her. Having learned a valuable lesson from this experience, Tracy vowed never to trick people again. Her relief was short-lived, however, as the lion's death went viral and she was soon receiving thousands of hate letters and threats a day, making her wish it had torn her head off after all." Crap, I made it worse! What is wrong with me?? Speaking of poop and dangerous animals that should be in cages, Donald Drumpf is back to showing his hideous true colors after an uncharacteristically classy and intelligent statement about Thomas S. Monson's death which, now that I think of it, was probably written by someone else. He escaped much scrutiny for saying that Haitians "all have AIDS" in late December, but couldn't just appreciate his good luck and instead decided to go farther, saying in reference to Haiti and Africa: "Why are we having all these people from ----hole countries come here?" He lamented that we aren't getting more from places like Norway instead. And, proving yet again that faith in humanity is a mental disorder, he has no shortage of worshipers defending this indefensible remark. I guess once you've defended "Grab them by the -----" it's a bit late to pretend you have principles. The United States of America was founded by impoverished, uneducated immigrants and, in many cases, refugees fleeing to a land that was already inhabited. And now several white and orange descendants of those impoverished, uneducated immigrants and refugees have decided that this is exclusively their country and modern immigrants and refugees can go screw themselves. This attitude is about as un-American as you can get. To say nothing of un-Christian, though virtually all of these people claim somewhat implausibly to follow Christ. I don't purport to judge their hearts, but I wish to be on record now and forever as denouncing their ideology and their words for the festering goat vomit that they are. Oh, and it turns out that most Norwegians are well off enough to not have to move to a country run by a clueless xenophobic jackass. (That's you, Mr. President.) But hey, at least he speaks his small, disgusting, abominable mind. Of course I'm still looking at ways to get more attention. Get a load of this. Of course the pages being accessed here are "It Ain't Ogre Till It's Ogre", "Review of the Mata Nui Online Game", "Why Are Mormons So Hot?" and various parts of "LDS Racial History". The first is a story I wrote that says a little too much about how I see the world. The second refers to a game that defines my childhood and oozes nostalgia. It's true, my ward is full of hot Mormons, and I'm not just talking about the females and I'm not just talking about the young people. I daresay we have more heat per capita than the Sahara desert at noon. And my website has more information about Mary Frances Sturlaugson Eyer, the first black LDS sister missionary ever, than any other internet source. Not in a creepy way. It's all taken from her autobiographies that I borrowed from my grandparents a little over two years ago and should probably return now.
I do what I can with SEO and Facebook shares and stuff, but I think my most effective tool has been unsolicited word-of-mouth. Claire Warburton, Amelia Whitlock, and Allie Haas seem to have been my most enthusiastic proselytizers. Claire was the one who sparked it off. I mentioned the blog to her for some reason that I don't even remember now, thinking nothing more of it, and certainly not expecting her to binge-read it and share it with her roommates and sister and whoever came to her house. I think that, for better or worse, the blog appeals more to people who know me than strangers who stumble across it. And I want all the people who know me to read it so they'll know I'm smarter than I come across in person (especially this one girl at church who's very kind but keeps speaking to me like I'm a child). Granted, then they'll also realize that I'm not as nice or innocent as they think, but the tradeoff is worth it. I wouldn't mind a bit more unsolicited word-of-mouth. Hint, hint. I went back to school at Utah State University, home of the true-blooded Aggies from Utah who love the spot where the sagebrush grows, this week. It took about five minutes of my first class to realize why my adviser warned me about taking fifteen credits this time. More on that in the next installment of my thrilling life. The powers that be trained me to scan CDs and DVDs and had me do those instead of books almost every day for the past two weeks. It's been a nice change of pace, but since I don't want to make anyone jealous of how great my life is, I'll focus on the negative aspects here. 1. Most of the hundreds of CDs that I've handled per day fall into one of four categories: (a) albums that I own, (b) albums that I want because I recognize the artist and/or know I'd like them, (c) albums that I want because they look intriguing, and (d) albums that I want because they have music on them. And I either have to send them away to get sold or throw them away. This is eating away at what little sanity I had to begin with. I'm not made of stone. 2. Amazon's search function, which I have to use to title search the CDs that can't be scanned, sucks. If I accidentally leave out a letter, which happens fairly often since the keys are stiff and clunky compared to the laptop I'm used to, more often than not it declines to autocorrect or suggest what I really meant like Google or any other search engine would. But on the other hand, it takes the liberty of autocorrecting words that I did spell correctly. I searched for "Myst III" (the video game) and it said "We couldn't find any results for 'mist iii'". I searched for "overcoming the guilt of your past" and it said "We couldn't find any results for 'overcoming the quilt of your past'". I kid you not. When this happens I have to put quotation marks around the inexplicably controversial words to stop Amazon from changing them. Grr. I know, I know, first world problems. Also I got this promotion that I neither want nor deserve and I'm not comfortable with it. It seems like at least half of my coworkers are in my stake (cluster of LDS congregations similar to a diocese, whatever that is). One of them, "Sally", is now an ex-coworker but because of this I still see her around. And when I do I always get this weird vibe like "It's great to see you, now go away." I don't know, I don't interpret vibes very well. I don't see why there should be any awkwardness because we both made it clear where we stand vis-a-vis friendship and other stuff. One time we were talking at work and some other coworker commented something about "blossoming romance". And then Sally said something, I don't remember exactly, but it was something to the effect of "No no no no no no no no no." And I, trying to be witty but really just being stupid, said, "It's like a bromance but with a sister." Because "sistance" doesn't really work, you know. And then Sally was like, "Oh, great, I've been brozoned." And I was like, "But... I thought that's what you wanted." And she was like, "Oh, it is, it is." And the other coworker, mockingly imitating me, said "I can't do anything right!" But Sally offered me free ice cream at the ice cream place that her treasonous backstabbing self now thinks is better than Jenson Online, and I took her up on it recently because I'd felt like crap for so long. So she can act as weird and standoffish as she wants. This just goes to show that if you make friends whenever you can, statistically some of them are bound to justify it by getting you stuff. After an email from the LDS Church's Correlation Research Department, and a survey about my testimony, church attendance, problematic issues etc., I was invited to participate in a reading of sample chapters from the upcoming four-volume church history publication that's part of ongoing efforts to be more transparent and forthcoming about "controversial" stuff. I wish they'd done it at least twenty years ago, but nobody asked me. Of course, once I accepted, only death could have made me miss this opportunity. If someone had cut off my arms and legs, I would have dragged myself with my teeth until someone took pity and gave me a ride. I've never done this sort of thing before and it wasn't what I expected. I thought they were going to have some historian guy, like our local hero Phillip Barlow, read the chapters out loud to us. But actually they had the chapters printed out for us to read on our own, highlight the parts we liked in green and the parts we didn't like in red, write comments, and answer some brief questions. And they had it in the Primary room. So I showed up to this church building I'd never been in, looked in the Primary room, saw people highlighting and thought they were coloring in an attempt to recapture their childhoods or something. I thought it was a separate thing from my thing. So I ended up sitting in the foyer, frustrated and baffled, but I wasn't the only one. There were at least eight equally confused people there with me by the time someone found us and told us where to go. The guy in charge of the thing was totally bald yet not super old-looking, like Elder Oaks, and wore a long black overcoat that was distinctive from the suits normally worn by General Authorities and church employees. This made him seem like part of a secret branch or something. He explained what to do, including the table of snacks and the $20 Amazon gift card for each of us at the end. The emails had neglected to mention those details - obviously the push for transparency has a long way to go. What I actually read is, of course, confidential. I'll just say that it was very pleased. I'm better-versed in church history than average but there were quotes and anecdotes I hadn't seen before, and the "controversial" bits were seamlessly woven in like I wish they had been all along. I had to press myself to find enough criticisms to justify my participation, and I had to stop myself from critiquing historical events and people like I would a fiction story. "This is an irrational way for this character to act." "That was a stupid thing to say." I did feel compelled to write "Rude" next to one quote. History throughout history has essentially been propaganda written to assert the superiority of the author's nation, religion, favorite color, etc. Omitting whatever facts they didn't like and exaggerating or fudging the remaining ones was the norm. That only really changed in the twentieth century, and the LDS Church is finally catching up. Elder Dallin H. Oaks remarked on this lag a decade ago: "[W]e're emerging from a period of history writing within the Church [of] adoring history that doesn't deal with anything that’s unfavorable, and we're coming into a period of 'warts and all' kind of history. Perhaps our writing of history is lagging behind the times, but I believe that there is purpose in all these things - there may have been a time when Church members could not have been as well prepared for that kind of historical writing as they may be now." The thing I read was well-written history, not propaganda, yet it didn't back away from or compromise on its religious truth claims. So I liked it. I am hopefully going back to school this semester so I can get closer to being a real writer and not just a pretender. I had no idea how to go back, but up to this point it's been ridiculously easy. I emailed the registrar's office to ask what I needed to do so I could enroll again, and they arranged it. I emailed my adviser to ask what I needed to do to get my major changed in the system, and she arranged it. I couldn't have dreamed it would be so simple. And I didn't want to go back, but now I'm really excited. Writing classes are the best. Sarah Brightman - Here With MeYes, sometimes you can judge an album by its cover. That's why I bought this from Deseret Industries one day a couple years ago, having never before heard of the artist in question. I knew I would like it, and I wasn't wrong. And this, in my opinion, is the best track - a cover of Dido that she, Dido, apparently doesn't like, but with all due respect to her it's much better than the original. Largely because Sarah Brightman's voice has got to be in the top ten most beautiful sounds produced on planet Earth. Listening to her now, with all her classical and operatic and vocal and New Age and whatever, you would probably never guess that she made her debut at age 18 as the lead singer on a sci-fi disco single called "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper". So that was a thing that happened. The last couple weeks have brought a few phenomenally crappy days that I would have liked to sleep through. Thanks go out to Tyler, Jen, Eliana, and Lorelei for their support, to Tori for the pizza and brownies, and to the guys from church for a blessing. They're relatively new to the ward and I've been here for over five years so by all rights I should be the one taking them under my wing and showing them around and stuff, but I guess that's not my thing. And then they asked "Is there anything else we can do for you?" and I never know how to answer such an open-ended question. How much money can I ask for without being rude? I was told there's a spot reserved for me in the Celestial Kingdom. I assume that's metaphorical. What's a "spot" in the Celestial Kingdom? "Here's where you'll be sitting for eternity. It's very comfortable." This is a thought I had while half-awake and delirious. Sometimes I think that should be my excuse for my entire blog. The other day while Audrey was working at her computer I snuck up on her and put my face really close to hers and waited for her to notice. When she did, she jumped and moaned with fright. I thought that was a rather rude and uncalled for reaction to my new look. Audrey: That was not nice! Me: Then why are you smiling? Audrey: Because it was good. Me: You should be flattered that I tried to look like you. Audrey: Hahahahahaha! Then she left and came back and I pointed out that there was something on her water bottle. She looked at it and then just rolled her eyes at me, which I felt was unfair because I saw someone else scare her with a considerably smaller spider. But apparently I'm a "bad actor" or something. But a few minutes later, I started to get jealous of the attention she was giving her computer instead of me, so I snarled and made the spider jump on her hand. And somehow that scared her. As you can surmise, it was a very good day. PhantasmagoriaReader discretion is advised for this section due to disturbing content. Even at my ripe old age I still periodically become aware of disgusting or disturbing things that make me wish I didn't live on this planet. And then I often feel compelled to keep looking at them or researching them until I get all the facts and/or become desensitized. For example, I once learned in a roundabout way that a 1995 computer game called "Harvester" has a scene of children eating their mother. I felt compelled to actually look up the scene on YouTube, and I was glad I did because it was far less disturbing than in my imagination. I had imagined the children sitting around a dinner table with their mother's corpse sprawled across it. In the actual scene, however, the mother is very much alive and too tired to pay attention to the children taking bites out of her limbs. She matter-of-factly explains to the player that this is a metaphor for parenthood. So I could rest easy with that. "Look, tell you what, we'll eat her, if you feel a bit guilty about it afterwards, we can dig a grave and you can throw up in it." (Name that reference) "Harvester" is still gratuitously disturbing, but another game released that same year makes it look like a church picnic. "Phantasmagoria" was very controversial upon its release and is extremely violent even by today's standards. The backstory is essentially this: a magician messes around with dark arts and gets possessed by a demon that makes him murder a succession of five wives in various horrific ways that I don't feel like describing. Local people just assume these deaths are all bizarre accidents, which is pretty stupid of them. I mean, I'm sure with all the billions of people who have ever lived that some guy has indeed been unlucky enough to have five wives die in bizarre accidents, but his neighbors should have been veeery suspicious. Certainly the fifth wife in this story would seem to have been a few fries short of a Happy Meal - perhaps she fell prey to the gambler's fallacy and wrongly assumed that because four wives had already died in bizarre accidents, it was less likely that she would - but to her credit she figures out what's going on and her lover manages to mortally wound the magician before he kills both of them. A century or so later, a young couple moves into his mansion. Original, right? The woman goes exploring and accidentally unleashes the demon which, unknown to her, possesses her husband. Over the course of a week she learns the backstory and witnesses all the murders in magic flashbacks. Meanwhile, her husband is becoming more and more of a jerk. In the most controversial scene of the game, which the writer argued was necessary for some reason, he rapes her. And later on he chases her and tries to kill her. Oh, and also there's an old woman and her mentally handicapped son who get killed somewhere along the way. There are several gory death scenes for the protagonist throughout the game if the player fails, most famously getting her head ripped in half. But if the player succeeds, she kills him instead and then dispels the demon. And then she wanders away from the mansion in a daze. The end. I mean, I'm sure there were also years of therapy afterward but those aren't shown. I haven't played the game or watched a walkthrough of the game and I'm never going to do either of those things, so my knowledge is incomplete, but I think that's about it. Oh, and all the characters are portrayed by live actors. Delightful. I sort of get why this sort of thing is appealing. It's not meant to be pleasant. You're not supposed to "enjoy" the gore and the pain and the terror, per se. But it is cathartic somehow to experience fear and disgust in controlled environment at times. I think it's similar to the appeal of sad movies and songs. Sometimes I'm not in the mood for "Walking on Sunshine", you know? Which is a great song, don't get me wrong. But sometimes a guy singing about how he wants to die is more helpful because it's like someone is commiserating with you instead of invalidating your problems and telling you to just get over it. And I think this is similar. While most of us try to ignore the ugliness in the world most of the time for our happiness and sanity, there can be something refreshing in a sick kind of way about embracing it now and again. I don't know, maybe this is all crazy talk. But I think I get why people liked this game. It was Sierra's first title to sell over a million units and made their stock value skyrocket. Myself, like I said, I have no desire to get any more into it than my web research already did. I did recently watch a legit horror movie for the first time (horror comedy musicals don't count and I found "Poltergeist" to be far more weird than scary) and while I don't intend to make a habit of that, I did appreciate the experience. Even though Christopher Lee's and Christopher Walken's acting talents were grossly underused and I'm not just saying that for the obvious reason. But at least the people in "Sleepy Hollow" died quickly. Swish, plop, dead. That reminds me, I wrote a comic script related to that topic. Panel 1 Horseman: Oogedy boogedy! It is I, the headless man, the spookiest spook that ever spooked! Tyler: Where's your horse? Panel 2 Horseman: Oh, I'm not a horseman anymore. Feeding and cleaning up after him was such a hassle. Tyler: Well, he was part of your trademark. You just aren't distinctive or spooky without him. Panel 3 Horseman: So... this isn't cutting it? Tyler: Use the horse, spook. If it had been more like "Phantasmagoria", way over the top for my tastes, I would have been too squeamish and walked out. That's definitely not my speed. And the reason this sort of thing really bothers me is that while games and movies are fictional, pain is not. And they remind me of that and I hate it. Every type of suffering portrayed in "Phantasmagoria", and worse, has been experienced by someone somewhere. I hate to think about that. Physical pain is the worst in my book. I feel very blessed to just have this emotional crap. Give me depression over a hangnail any day of the week. Oh, and also I was forced to ponder the question of how, demon or no demon, you can be sure that your spouse will never murder you. And the answer is, you can't. Yay. Getting married is an enormous leap of faith. Of course, if their previous four spouses are dead, there's a very slight chance that just might be a teensy little red flag. Happy Halloween! Phantasmagoria - Take a StandI love listening to music, of course, but on top of that I have a literal addiction to collecting it without regard to whether I actually like it. I've downloaded thousands and thousands of songs from the internet without listening to them first, often just because they were (legally) free. And that includes hundreds of soundtracks from games that I've never played. Now Phantasmagoria is on that list. The music, fortunately, gives no indication of the disturbing stuff. Unfortunately the quality is crap because of how it was compressed. The opening theme, "Consumite Furore" ("Consume With Your Rage"), used a choir of 150 people, but with how the quality was reduced it sounds more like a third that many. Anyway, this cheesy closing song stands out in stark contrast to the overall tone of the game, and redeems it a bit in my eyes. It's a testament to the indomitable human spirit, to having hope in the face of ungodly nightmares that no one should ever have to live through. And it's catchy.
I'm over my head cold! Now I just have the usual cough that I've had off and on since March 2014. Yes, I saw a doctor. He said it was nothing to worry about, just inflammation. He gave me medicine that tasted like motor oil. I had to drink it every day. It didn't do jack for me. I stopped worrying about it. It's just part of my life now. I may as well have smoked. WeddingsI went to a wedding reception on Wednesday. It was for me and my beautiful new bride, Felicity Nicholson (nee Jones). You may be familiar with her. She was recently in a moderately successful film in a moderately popular franchise. She'll probably keep using her maiden name for publicity purposes. There is a bit of an age difference, but when you're in love that's just a number. And I made all that up except for the wedding reception part. It was for a friend from church. I know him a little bit and his new wife not at all. I think the reception was the first time I ever spoke to her, but what do I know? People say "Hi Chris" to me and I don't even recognize their faces, so I'm not a reliable source on that. He said to her "Do you know Chris?" and she was like "Yeah, we've met" so maybe that's a more accurate statement. As I was riding back, the two people in the front seats discussed marriage and how they aren't super into it. I was shocked. Of course, I noticed long ago that most of the Mormons at church don't seem to be nearly as obsessed with marriage as Mormons are stereotypically supposed to be. Watching "The Singles Ward" didn't make me think "Wow, this is so relatable!", it made me think "Wow, Provo Mormons are freaks." (No offense, Provo Mormons.) But I thought I was the only one who didn't have any particular desire for it. Let me be clear. Sometimes I find a really incredible woman whose company I prefer to being alone and I think that sure, I'd like to marry her. But the concept of marriage per se, with no particular candidate in mind, holds very little appeal for me. I'm certainly not motivated to spend one iota of effort looking for such a candidate. I would want to get married because of a woman, not vice-versa. And I guess I'm not as unusual in that as I thought. But I'm not "anti-marriage" as someone once insinuated. Marriage is anti-me. I didn't participate much in their conversation because I have difficulty inserting my comments in conversations with more than one other person. People don't usually pause at all between remarks, so I can't say anything without cutting someone off, and I'd feel guilty about that. So I mostly just listened. It was good stuff. "Most guys," the girl said to the guy, "I'm not saying you, but most guys only care about three things in a girl. Do I want to have sex with her, is she fairly righteous - she says she wants a temple marriage, and does she agree with and validate everything I say?" I only care about one of those things. I must be really exceptional. She also expressed her appreciation that she doesn't have to pretend to be stupid around her current boyfriend. She said lots of guys are intimidated by intelligence. That's understandable, but the alternative is worse. Talking to stupid people saps my will to live. But other guys are into that? Whatever. She noticed me typing on my laptop and said, "I assume you're doing homework." And I had to admit that I was actually writing comics. Alvin and the CracroftsRemember those comics that I wrote but never drew? (See the post category entitled "The Cracrofts".) I started writing them again, but after I cranked out at least fifty on Saturday and realized it would take much much longer to draw the same number, they may never get drawn after all. We'll see. In coming weeks I may share several more like I did last year, which conveniently saves me having to write much in the posts, but here are just a couple for now. Of course, I try to share the ones I'm actually proud of, and there are others that range from mediocre to downright lame. Sometimes I get too focused on moving a story along or preaching my viewpoints and sacrifice actual humor in the process (insert your own quip about me always doing that here). Also, I changed the title from "The Cracrofts" to "Alvin and the Cracrofts" as a chipmunk homage. There have been a few other changes. It's become more "cartoony" overall as its world now canonically includes not just aliens and cloned dinosaurs but also ghosts and Santa Claus. This is largely because at the end of every year (the comic takes place in real time from 2004 to 2024) I wanted to have a different Christmas parody/homage - I posted the first one, "The Gift of the Magi", last year - and these more often than not have fantasy elements. With her having encountered all these things, Tyler's atheism became less plausible and she's been downgraded to an agnostic. One line I will never cross is having characters break the fourth wall, but they come dangerously close by recognizing the tropes at play around them. But tropes are our friend. I changed the backstory so that Rachel acquired her pet Komodo dragon, Steve, at age five instead of twenty-four. I thought it made a much better story for her to grow up with him and form a lifelong bond and face the world together. But then I realized that made him too old and he would have to die during the comic's timeframe, because Komodo dragons only live up to thirty years in captivity. I tried to think of a way around this - perhaps yet another fantasy element like the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth. But in the end I decided, instead of resolving it, to just "hang a lampshade on it". This is the trope whereby writers draw attention to the implausibility of something without actually explaining it, to make the audience okay with it. This usually works because implausible things do happen in real life, but not without drawing attention. So I just have characters occasionally remark on Steve's incredible longevity a few times over the years. This had the unfortunate side effect of creating one of the least cynical moments I've ever written. Panel 1 Alvin: Speaking of longevity... Steve's been around forty years, which is ten years longer than most Komodo dragons in captivity. That's just as amazing. Panel 2 Rachel: Well, most Komodo dragons in captivity have never received as much love as ours. Alvin: … Panel 3 (They silently watch Tyler playing with Steve) To compensate for that emotion, here's a more autobiographical one. The name of the company involved has NOT been changed. Panel 1 Alvin: #@$%! CenturyLink should be embarrassed to charge money for this #@$% wi-fi service. Panel 2 Alvin: It should not take me eight #@$% minutes to load a five second long gif. There's no excuse for this #@$%. Screw this abomination of a company. Panel 3 Alvin: Sorry about that, Rachel. I'm just stressed. Rachel: And you're trying to relax by staring at a blank white webpage? I don't think I shared this one yet. If I did, it's worth sharing again. If I had to pick only one strip to get drawn, this would probably be it. My sister thought it was gross, but what does she know? Panel 1 Alvin: Playing with your dolls, sweetie? Tyler: No duh. Panel 2 Alvin: What's Barbie doing today? Tyler: Removing Ken's head with a meat cleaver. Panel 3 Alvin: That's... not very nice. Tyler: If she's told him once to get his dirty underwear off the floor, she's told him a thousand times. This is another one that I'm very pleased with and don't think I've shared. Mary is a college student interning with a high school biology teacher, and Tyler and David are her helpers. Panel 1 Tyler: Hello, Mary. Up to any fun projects lately? Mary: I've been testing a new perfume that simulates pheromones more thoroughly than anything before. It should be super effective. Panel 2 Tyler: Oh, are you testing it on yourself? Mary: Ha! Not yet. It's not in the stage where it can be used on humans. Panel 3 Mary: That's a side project, though. We've got some real work to do today. Tyler: Right. David? David (off-screen): Just a minute. Have you ever noticed how cute these lab mice are? I finally put one of my favorite ideas ever into writing. It was a stand-alone idea featuring Katy Perry herself, but I figured it still works without her so I added it to this franchise: Panel 1 Alvin: Why so happy, Rachel? Rachel: I almost ran over a bushy-tailed rodent. I swerved just in time, and I was so relieved that I got a feeling of intense euphoria. Panel 2 Alvin: So what you're saying is – Rachel: Right. I missed a squirrel and I liked it. One of my very first ideas when I decided I wanted to write comics is never going to be used because it doesn't fit how the characters ended up. So this will probably be the only place you'll ever see it. Feel privileged! Panel 1 (A bunch of people are being held hostage in a bank) Criminal: All right, everybody stay down and be quiet! Alvin: Please, sir... I have a wife and seven kids at home. Panel 2 Criminal: Are you asking me to let you go? Alvin: I'm asking you to shoot me. Aaand a sneak peek at a new character! I figured Tyler needs authority figures to drive crazy at school as well as home. But don't worry, the new character will dish it out as well as she takes it. Panel 1 Bill: Tyler, Al tells me you talk to your principal a lot. She's quite a looker. Do you know if she's single? Tyler: Yeah, I think so. Panel 2 Bill: Excellent. Tyler: With all due respect, Uncle Bill, Principal Donaldson is a fine, classy lady. She deserves better than your nonsense. Panel 3 Bill: Oh. Tyler: But since I hate her guts, I'd be happy to arrange it. ^ Inspired by Erica, a really classy and attractive barber I went to as a kid. More than once I heard my dad say that it blew his mind that she was still single, and that he wanted to set her up with one of his friends but none of them were worthy of her. Fun at WorkMe: I found a book to help me with you. Her: Do you have a marker? She thinks she's so funny. You know, I do think it's funny how she threatens physical violence against me while I would never dream of doing the same to her. I understand why this double standard exists and I'm okay with it. I have joked about hurting her on accident. One time she was inside a box to cut it up and I was like, "Who left this box laying around here? I'd better flatten it. I'd better stomp on it to make it flat." She, by contrast, has threatened to stomp on me on purpose. Specifically on my throat. Popeye the Sailor - A Date to Skate (1938)I shared cartoons a few times and then just stopped but now for some reason this cartoon has been on my brain lately. It's one of my favorite Popeye cartoons because it's just cute and breaks away from the usual plot formula. Olive sassing Popeye by mimicking his unique speech pattern under her breath is priceless too imho. Ignore the one teensy little racist part. After I looked this up, I kept looking and accidentally stayed up way past my bedtime watching Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies ("Pigs in a Polka", "Robinson Crusoe Jr.", "Ali Baba Bound", "Porky's Railroad", "We, the Animals Squeak!", "The Henpecked Duck", and "The Coy Decoy", in case you were wondering). |
"Guys. Chris's blog is the stuff of legends. If you’re ever looking for a good read, check this out!"
- Amelia Whitlock "I don't know how well you know Christopher Randall Nicholson, but... he's trolling. You should read his blog. It's delightful." - David Young About the AuthorC. Randall Nicholson is a white cisgender Christian male, so you can hate him without guilt, but he's also autistic and asexual, so you can't, unless you're an anti-vaxxer, in which case the feeling is mutual. This blog is where he periodically rants about life, the universe, and/or everything. Archives
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