Logan just had its annual Summerfest arts fair, possibly the last I'll ever attend, since I'm moving out of town in three weeks. I wandered around more wistfully than usual, but like usual, I awkwardly tried to look at all the booths without making eye contact with the sellers and feeling guilty for not buying anything. I wonder if AI will drive down the price of art. Maybe the amount of labor people put into their art is worth the prices they charge, but how do they stay in business? Who the hell has $4,300 to spend on a painting? Certainly not the average citizen of Logan. If I charged for the labor I put into my novel, it would cost more than a textbook. More than two textbooks, even.
Speaking of which, I spent an hour talking to Nathanael Wright, the author of Fairy Tales of Kindness and Courage, who remembers me from some singles ward or other. Actually, I didn't talk to him the whole time because whenever his target audience came near his booth, he had to talk to them and invite them to take free stickers. So in addition to picking his brain for advice, I got to observe his salesmanship in action. His books are also self-published, though they look much better than mine. He probably had more money to put into them. I didn't buy any because I'm not in the target audience. They are more affordable than most items at Summerfest, though. He said that if he ever finds a typo in one of his published books, he goes and quietly changes the manuscript without guilt. I may have to do that now. I haven't found any typos per se, but I want to pull a George Lucas and keep making my novel better. I do that with blog posts sometimes. I've watched the first three episodes of the new Star Wars show "The Acolyte." I really wanted to like it. I was eager to see an era besides the freaking Empire for a change. And I see it as a good thing that Star Wars has more brown people and lesbians than it used to. But the characters are too boring to save the weak plot. I'm sure I'll watch the rest of the season just because I have an unhealthy relationship with Star Wars, but if you don't have an unhealthy relationship with Star Wars and you don't make monetized reviews on YouTube, don't bother. I agree with most of the YouTuber criticisms, but again, I see it as a good thing that Star Wars has more brown people and lesbians than it used to. I don't feel attacked by that. This one YouTuber complained that the midi-chlorians are racist because a scene of Jedi younglings contained no white males. I want to know if he's ever, even once in his life, complained about a group of people containing no Asian females. Some white males just feel threatened by not constantly being the center of the universe. On the flip side, Republicans are enraged by the possibility of their daughters having to register for selective service and potentially fight in wars. I resent their implication that my life is more expendable than a woman's or that my penis comes with a greater obligation to die in wars that other men started. Making men register for selective service based on their sex is a civil rights violation. Making women register too would also be a civil rights violation, but at least it would remove the sex discrimination aspect, and since Republicans value their daughters more than their sons (even though they have a strange way of showing it by fighting against women's healthcare and reproductive rights), this could motivate them to abolish the damn thing altogether. So I'm all for it. And deranged Utah senator Mike Lee says it will happen over his dead body, so that's a win-win. A friend gave me one of her legal mushroom gummies, and I ate it today, hoping to get a spiritual experience. It made me kind of hungry and extremely tired for about three hours. If I'd known it would have that effect, I would have saved it for right before bed. I wish I had something more interesting to report. She also gave me one of another kind of gummy, so there's still hope for that one. Ultimately, I intend to try psilocybin, maybe after I move closer to the Divine Assembly. I don't think I ever wrote about the book that completely changed my perspective on psychedelic drugs a few months ago. It's called The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, and I recommend it to everyone. This book makes so much sense of the history of religion and is one reason I believe in life after death. I'll have to say more about it when I'm in the mood. I went to a Juneteenth concert on campus this evening. Racists on social media are still complaining about Juneteenth, and they still need to drop dead. I was going to say something less family-friendly, but I decided to be compassionate. It must be the effect of that gummy. So I went to the concert, and then as I was leaving, I saw Brad Hansen, one of the local cops that I have a problem with. By the time I recognized him, though, I'd missed my chance to flip him off. I consoled myself over this missed opportunity by spitting on his empty car. So we'll see if I get arrested for that.
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The type of people who read my blog aren't likely to be the type of people who ask stupid and disingenuous questions like "wHy IsN't ThErE a StRaIgHt PrIdE mOnTh?" But the latter are probably dumb enough to stumble here by accident while looking for Trump porn, so just in case that happens, I'll explain it again. Pride Month and Pride parades evolved from the Stonewall riots, which were a backlash against police doing what police do best: harassing and bullying marginalized people for no reason. Gay people decided they didn't want to live as third-class citizens anymore. They decided they should be allowed to exist in public and love themselves. If straight people had literally just not persecuted them, Pride Month wouldn't be a thing. So everyone who never lifted a finger to defend their rights or dignity but now has a problem with Pride Month existing ought to shut the hell up. The more you bitch and moan about being forced to notice that LGBTQ people exist, the more you prove that Pride Month needs to exist, and the more you motivate people to Pride even harder. Derp. I'm not gay, even though I was called "faggot" five times a day in elementary school, but in honor of Pride Month, I decided to share the time I was attracted to Rudolf Nureyev when I saw him on the Muppet Show as a kid. It wasn't like the crushes I had on girls whom I thought were pretty. He just had some kind of charisma that I couldn't define. He just fascinated me in a different way than the other guest stars. When I looked him up and found out he was gay, I concluded that gayness must be contagious. I think a lot of straight men have historically thought that being gay was contagious. I think that's why they've used slurs and committed hate crimes against gay men instead of being grateful to have less competition. Today in 2024, morons still think that their children will become gay if they're allowed to see gay people existing, so we still have a long way to go in conveying to Republicans a basic understanding of how the world works. So anyway, that frightened me a little. The fact that he died of AIDS also reinforced my perception that gay people were sexual degenerates. He had fewer partners than Donald Trump, though. And a lot fewer than Joseph Smith. I've been watching The Muppet Show from start to finish this year to make the most of the overpriced Disney+ subscription that I share with a friend. When I got to the Rudolf Nureyev episode, I realized that people may be skeptical of me saying that my attraction to him wasn't physical. In one scene, he wears tight white pants that leave little of his ass cheeks to the imagination. In another, he wears a towel in a steam room. This scene revolves around Miss Piggy sexually harassing him, singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" (which really wasn't a sexual harassment song in the cultural context of the 1940s, but is in a very different context here), and (spoiler alert) eventually pulling his towel off. I guess it was extra funny because of his sexuality, which was an open secret. Besides the obvious problems with this scene, I'm a little sad that they didn't sing "Rudolf the Red-Faced Russian" instead. Watching the show as an adult has made me realize that Miss Piggy is a straight-up sexual predator. Even in the 1970s, people wouldn't have laughed at the dynamic between her and Kermit if the gender roles were reversed. She's worse than Pepé Le Pew. At least he was sincerely oblivious and never karate-chopped Penelope into a wall for refusing his advances.
But on a more positive note, I was also astonished to learn that the Great Gonzo has been canonically bisexual since 1979. I can't believe I've never heard anyone mention that before. In the Leslie Uggams episode, Gonzo is smitten with Big Bird. I thought the punchline would be him realizing that Big Bird is a boy, but the actual punchline is Camilla getting jealous and dropping a flowerpot on his head. It's never implied that the same-sex aspect of this attraction is weird or degenerate. (Technically Big Bird has the mind of a young child, but Gonzo didn't know that, so give him a break.) In the Roger Miller episode, he finds Kermit attractive after the latter turns into a chicken. Since the film "Muppets in Space" established that Gonzo is an alien, my hypothesis is that all the aliens in the finale were male, and the females of his species look like chickens. Nureyev feared for his safety and defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 in part because of his sexuality. If he were alive today, he would still have to avoid Russia, because it's still an extremely homophobic country. It's a country that arrests journalists for interviewing gay people. No wonder Republicans think Ukraine is the bad guy. If you weren't aware already, be advised that International Transgender Day of Visibility is on March 31 every year, so the right-wing Christians who claim that it was a deliberate ploy by Joe Biden to hijack Easter and destroy their "values" are full of crap. I put values in quotation marks because their values are also crap. If anything, Easter is the problem for refusing to pick a day and stick with it. But I have no problem recognizing and appreciating both holidays. I'm having a delightful time staying with my uncle and aunt and their kids. They're all at church as I write this. I talked to my uncle the other day about having left the LDS Church, and he was totally supportive and hopes I'm happy. He shared his own experience and said he has questions he can't answer, but he believes in the church because of experiences he's had and because it makes him happy. And you know what, I'm totally supportive of people believing whatever they want if it makes them happy and doesn't hurt others. That's just not what I want for myself. I want to only believe things that I have sufficient reason to believe are true, even if they make me miserable. As it happens, I have come to a place of happiness with my beliefs because science has proven that consciousness persists after death. If we didn't have that proof, it would still be possible, but I wouldn't be able to make myself believe it just because it would make me happy. I'm also big on informed consent. If people know about all the problems with the LDS Church's behavior and truth claims and still choose to believe in it, that's their business, but they should know. I was not given informed consent when I was raised and indoctrinated in the church, and I would have made different life decisions if I'd known as much then as I do now. Anyway, this being two holidays and me being on vacation, I don't feel like writing a whole lot, so here's a nice Easter song. In Which Mormons on Twitter Melt Down Over the LDS Church's New Global Communications Director14/1/2024 Mormons often assert that just because they disagree with LGBTQ lifestyle choices doesn't mean they hate LGBTQ people. Perhaps in theory, that could be true. In practice, it seldom is. I've repeatedly observed that Mormons who think same-sex marriage is sinful are dripping with barely concealed disdain for gay people, while Mormons who love and respect gay people don't give a crap about same-sex marriage, even if they don't vocally support it. The other day the LDS Church shocked the former group by hiring as its global communications director someone who has vocally supported it, as well as transgender rights. I admit that choice is a little confusing, but oh, it's been beautiful to watch the bigots' brains break. People who blindly support and defend almost everything else done by their church draw the line when it contradicts their personal politics or prejudices. Of course this isn't the first time. They had a heyday in 2020 when the church asked them to wear masks, get vaccinated, root out racism, and peacefully accept election results. That was the year when I, still a Mormon, lost respect for my own people. Back then I actively encouraged them to leave the church and stop humiliating me. Now I just laugh. The church loses whether they leave or stay, because Lord knows they're not going to change. Perhaps this will be of little interest to anyone but me, but I've collected several Twitter screenshots to drag back out thirty years from now when Mormons claim that they've always been LGBTQ-affirming. I saved a lot of time by stealing most of them from AntiGaryDages, a fellow apostate, and the last few from StallionCornell, aka Jim Bennett, a liberal Mormon. I actually really like liberal Mormons. I don't think their nuanced approach to the LDS Church makes much sense, but they're good people trying to make their church and the world better, so I don't much care what they believe. Jim has about as much respect as I do for members of his church who make opposition to LGBTQ people the core of their faith. I'm at a loss as to why doubting Thomas thinks the LDS Church is against "climate activism," a topic it has never addressed in its entire history. It's been all but silent on environmental issues altogether. The one time I'm aware of that any of its leaders even publicly acknowledged climate change was in a devotional speech at BYU-Hawaii in 2017 when apostle Dallin Oaks said, "These are challenging times, filled with big worries: wars and rumors of wars, possible epidemics of infectious diseases, droughts, floods, and global warming. Seacoast cities are concerned with the rising level of the ocean, which will bring ocean tides to their doorsteps or over their thresholds. Global warming is also affecting agriculture and wildlife." Dallin Oaks is not one of my favorite people, but I appreciate that he's not a mindless partisan hack. Not because of this particular post, but the person running this account is one of the few that I wholeheartedly believe deserves to burn in hell. I don't think it's humanly possible for him to be stupid or delusional enough to believe that Jesus would approve of his vile behavior. Yes, his profile picture is former New Zealand Prime Minister and ex-Mormon Jacinda Ardern with a Hitler mustache. I guess conservatives think she's a Nazi because her administration's response to the pandemic saved an estimated 80,000 lives. Or maybe it's because she responded to New Zealand's one mass shooting by taking steps to keep it from happening again, and then it didn't happen again. That's not the American way! "iT's StIlL uP tO tHe StAtEs To DeCiDe" No, it isn't, it hasn't been for eight and a half years, and we all know that damn well that conservatives wouldn't complain about "states' rights" if the Supreme Court decided to ban same-sex marriage or abortion nationwide. They're no more sincere with this argument now than they were when they used it to defend slavery and segregation. ^ This. And, again, it doesn't actually seem to be possible to love gay people while opposing their "lifestyle." With the same occasional exceptions you would find among straight people, being in same-sex relationships (against LDS teachings) makes gay people happy, and being alone and celibate for life (in accordance with LDS teachings) makes gay people miserable. If you believe gay people should live in accordance with LDS teachings, you believe they should do that which demonstrably makes them miserable. And that isn't love by any reasonable definition. 1. Mormons have less right than almost anyone else in the world to get on a high horse about "traditional marriage." 2. Same-sex marriage has not erased "traditional marriage." 3. Yeah, this is kind of hypocritical for the LDS Church. Kind of like when it bragged about Michelle Wright Amos, a mission president's wife, being a NASA engineer who helped put the Perseverance rover on Mars, even though she held that position because decades earlier she'd disregarded the prophet's counsel for all married women to be stay-at-home moms. This guy has really internalized the church's manipulative blame-reversal BS. Nothing can ever be God's fault, the prophet's fault, or the church's fault, so any time something doesn't work out the way God or the prophet or the church said it would, it's your fault. Joseph Smith was a master of this. Once you see it throughout the Doctrine and Covenants, you can't unsee it. Also, Brigham Young was a lunatic, and people who admire him should probably be on a domestic terrorist watchlist. Crimson Mamba is clearly unaware of what the First Presidency said in an official statement dated August 17, 1949: "The attitude of the Church with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the Priesthood at the present time." Even if his remark earlier this year about encouraging white people to stay the hell away from Black people was taken out of context and not racist at all, it's pretty well-established that cartoonist Scott Adams is a massive dick. And that's a shame because his comic strip is one of the greatest ever produced. My dad, a mechanical engineer, had three Dilbert collections - Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy!, Still Pumped from Using the Mouse, and Fugitive from the Cubicle Police - and even as a kid who lacked the breadth and depth of knowledge to understand several of the strips, I found enough hilarity in them to read them several times. Here I share a sampling of the ones I didn't understand. Specifically, I share the edgiest and most shocking ones that I was too innocent to understand because they're the funniest. I can't believe some of these were allowed to run in newspapers. After getting canceled, Scott Adams removed the searchable archive from dilbert.com, so in order to make this post I downloaded all the strips and read them from the beginning. I'm almost finished with the nineties and I've covered the timeframe of my dad's books. As an adult, I find that I appreciate all the more how funny and clever this strip was, especially in the early years before it focused exclusively on workplace humor and showcased Dilbert and Dogbert in all kinds of wacky situations. It covers the spectrum from scathing satire to unapologetically cheap puns, and there were so many off-topic specimens that I wanted to share simply for being brilliant. I also found that, despite very much not being an engineer, I relate a lot to the protagonist. I relate to the way he painstakingly analyzes social situations and fails at them anyway, the way he geeks out over his interests while nobody else gives a shit, the way women treat him, and so on. Not that he isn't also a dick sometimes, but aren't we all? As a kid, I didn't understand why anyone would have a low opinion of law enforcement officers. The kids at Uvalde Elementary School, however, learned very early on that cops are wusses. They're trained to protect their own asses over all else, and the Supreme Court has ruled that it isn't their job to prevent crimes. The myth (or should I say lie) that they're selfless heroes who keep us safe needs to die. |
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- 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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