In the 2012 election, I stayed up late on pins and needles and was too depressed the next morning to get out of bed. This time, I simply didn't care about the result because I knew that, barring some miracle, I would hate it. So I'm not going to stress about it. Some of Trump's outlined policies for the first one hundred days look good to me. The rest are terrifying. At least there's no anti-vaccine crap on the horizon yet. The only bright side is that in order for him to win his opponent had to lose, and with any luck her political career is over. His never should have started. Obviously I didn't know what I was talking about when I said months ago that he wasn't going to be the nominee. I could go on and on about this but we've all had enough of that, haven't we? Yes, we have. Anyway, I'm not going to stress and if worst comes to worst I'm not married to the idea of staying in this country for the rest of my life. I did some research and found that some of the friendlier Middle Eastern countries have a surprising level of economic freedom. But since I was obsessing over the election earlier, I forgot to post this back when it would have been more relevant. It's a friend from back home wearing what I think is the coolest Halloween costume ever. They called it Khardharsan Zuud, which is apparently Mongolian for "nightmare". I'll take their word for it. Now want to see something really stupid? I knew you did. Here you go. There you have it, folks, God isn't real because of atoms and planets. That makes perfect sense because reasons. Oh, and if you're going to attempt to demonstrate the perceived superiority of science over religion you could do better than to perpetuate an inaccurate representation wrongly believed by laypeople in general and creationists in particular. The timeline of human evolution looks nothing like that. It's more like this: And this is the real relationship between humans and apes: Contributing to the current discussion on sexual assault that surely has nothing to do with any political figures, Cracked.com recently published this very enlightening article on "7 Reasons So Many Guys Don't Understand Sexual Consent". The article gives Han Solo in "The Empire Strikes Back" as one of its examples of entertainment media portrayals that disregard the principle of consent. I kind of pointed this out last December, but didn't realize it was actually a factor in shaping real attitudes because any guy who isn't Harrison Ford who aspires to be like Han Solo has delusions of grandeur bigger than the third Death Star - sorry, I mean Starkiller Base. I also saw a couple of articles about inadvertently creepy things that "nice guys" do, and since people have often called me a "nice guy", apparently thinking I don't know that it's a thinly veiled insult, I figured I should read them. Neither was very helpful. I haven't done any of the things they listed because I'm not brain-dead. Oh, and Mackenzie had tickets to a ski movie that she couldn't use because she was out of town. Apparently ski movies are a thing. So she asked if I wanted them and I could go on a date with someone. I had to think about it for a few hours before I remembered that I would rather shoot myself in the kneecaps. Besides, I've made it almost a year without asking any girls out and it would be a shame to give up now. The Mormon SectionAs much as I hate Mormon culture, most of the problems I've encountered with it and most of the people who have made me want to apostatize have been on the internet, not in any local congregation. I deal with a lot of pages and groups and their respective admins and members as I try to get my own foot in that door, and sometimes don't see eye-to-eye with them. Sometimes they downright disgust me. When several pages that knew better shared Rodney Meldrum's pseudoscience about Book of Mormon DNA, I protested, and their private responses were basically "Yes, I know this is a load of crap, but look how popular it is." Of course the fact that such things are popular because so many Mormons are gullible and scientifically illiterate enough to like and share them disgusts me too, but at least that doesn't evidence a lack of integrity. There is a group called "1 Million Mormons on Fb" (which, despite having existed for at least seven years, has well under one twenty-fifth of that amount). I've clashed with some people there too, particularly those who denounce articles as anti-Mormon without bothering to read them first and those who think I'm an apostate because I don't see eye-to-eye with them on cultural matters. I know at least one of the admins isn't my biggest fan notwithstanding I never intentionally broke any rules, including the vague "common sense and decency" clause. The other day, subsequent to not breaking any rules or posting anything that should have been controversial to anyone, I was banned out of the blue. Confused, I inquired of some admins, most of whom proceeded to ignore me. The only response I got was from Josie Meechan Barnshaw, who said, "Hi Christopher, I believe you posted something political, which is against the group's rules." To which the obvious response, though not the one I chose, would have been "Are you ------- kidding me?" I did not post anything political. I did not post anything that a person with a functioning brain and a first grade English reading level could possibly mistake for anything political. I certainly did not post any "DISCUSSION OF PARTY POLITICS OR CANDIDATES", which is what the rules actually forbid (caps in original). So the only conceivable origin of this accusation appears to be a deliberate, calculated lie by one of the admins. Which one? Was it W. Stephen Svedin, Brad Hill, Christine Sheets Bates, Donald E. Neighbors (though I know him from another setting and don't think he would do such a thing), Josie Meechan Barnshaw, Dan Owen, Cheri Murphy, Sheila Blume DuBois, Nikita Eden, or Toni Martin Owen? I have my suspicions about which one it was, but since I have no evidence, I shan't accuse him/her because that would lower me to his/her level. Of course I'll probably never know since he/she is too much of a coward to acknowledge my existence after banning me and making up a reason. So anyway, I told Josie that I hadn't posted anything political and showed her the last thing I had posted which was not political, and in response she proceeded to ignore me. After a few attempts to rejoin the group I was blocked by someone or other. Now I know how the impoverished Zoramites felt when the self-righteous Zoramites kicked them out of the synagogues. Assuming, that is, that they weren't so much distraught as really pissed off. Anyway, if I needed a clearer message that I don't belong and am not welcome among Mormons of this ilk, I have one now. This is why I like Robert Kirby so much. Also, I know it might have been socially unacceptable for me to list everyone's names like that and I don't care. Jordin Sparks - One Step at a TimeAt an institute dance in February last year I heard a song that I thought was impossibly beautiful, but didn't remember any of the words so I couldn't find it afterward. I requested a list of the songs they had played and they sent it to me and I checked all the ones I didn't recognize but it wasn't there. I gave up on it. Then, this week, I discovered that I had gotten it in my possession without even trying, on one of the albums I purchased during the Hastings clearance sale before they went out of business (may they rest in peace). It made my week. I was only really familiar with two Jordin Sparks songs, and between this and the rest of her two albums that I have I'm a fan now, and an even bigger fan after seeing what she had to say the day after the election: Many people might think I'm overreacting to call this song impossibly beautiful, but to each their own.
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For a limited time, unless it's expired since yesterday in which case I apologize for getting your hopes up, if you subscribe to the Greg Kofford Books newsletter, you can get a free ebook of "Mormonism at the Crossroads of Philosophy and Theology: Essays in Honor of David L. Paulsen". Perhaps not as useful as a hard copy for carrying around or leaving on the table so people will think you're super intellectual, but you can still leave it open on your device where people can see. I had forgotten how full church gets when school is in session. So many new people to ignore. Some of the new faces are also old faces - mostly the ones who were here last semester, but also Jessica from German class a couple years ago. One time we were partners and we were supposed to role-play a blind date in German for ten minutes. We worked out a script, went over it a few times to make sure our pronunciation was up to par, and then went in and were informed by the professor that we weren't allowed to use a script. So that was fun. And when we finished she (the professor) praised our performance and said something like, "Maybe you want to do something for real now, get coffee or something, I don't know." Of course we didn't because we don't drink coffee. I didn't know she (Jessica) was LDS though, and she probably didn't know I was either because while we were working out the script I think she saw the ex-Mormon forum in my browser history. I'm only human, I have weaknesses and I just go there out of curiosity sometimes, that's all. I'm not in school this semester but I went to all the Week of Welcome activities and that was great. I ran into Serena with Aggie Radio Theatre and she asked me to join for scriptwriting and she was like, "I've been trying to get you for so long because I was in your class and I've seen your writing." This was the first time she mentioned it to me. I guess when she visited all the English classes I was in to give her spiel about it, she was actually targeting me specifically. Flattery didn't get her nowhere, and I signed up. My friend Theoden wants me to help write storylines for his new video game design club too. These people are wisely taking advantage of my talent while it's still free. The other thing I did on campus was practice using a ten key pad for a test as part of a job interview, on which I scored about 7300 keystrokes per hour with 100% when the requirement was 6000 kph with 95% accuracy. Dialing telephones in my previous job really prepared me for that, although it means I can only do the hunt and peck method, but whatever works. That enabled me to get the job even though I flubbed a couple of the actual questions. It probably also helped that I added having autism to my resume in hopes that it would encourage people to cut me a little slack and/or be afraid of potential hiring discrimination lawsuits (just kidding). The job is at a book warehouse and doesn't involve talking to people at all. I was already sold on it when he showed me around, pointed to the workers with earphones and said, "You're allowed to listen to music." Duuude. I bought a portable mp3 player just for that, which I found on eBay for $7.99 with free shipping. I haven't bothered with an mp3 player since I lost my last one because I like shuffling all the music on my computer together. The library is my playlist. I didn't know what institute class to sign up for this semester because I've taken most of them at least once. In the end, I opted to take Brother Irwin's "Preparing for an Eternal Marriage" class, which is mostly a dating class, for the third time. The first time, I took it so I could run a cynical mental commentary on everything. The second time, I hoped to actually learn stuff, because I had an actual candidate in mind and I was already broaching the subject with her because she had a bunch of health problems and could have died at any time, and I didn't know yet that she was playing along because she thought the whole thing was a joke. This time, I'm taking it because it's probably the funniest class I've ever been in. (Brother Reese's church history courses come pretty close, so it's iffy, but I just took one of those last semester and now it's back to the Joseph Smith era which, with all due respect, is the least interesting era of church history to me because it's the one that we cherry-pick stories from to repeat ad nauseam.) I'm also mildly curious whether he took my advice to stop calling sex "intimacy". I've observed enough of institute teachers to see that they script out most of their jokes and stories ahead of time and then make it seem spontaneous, which is a great skill to have. So I knew this class would start out roughly the same as the first two times, and it did. First he told the story about stabbing himself in the eye with a screwdriver by way of explanation for why he only looks at people with one eye, and a bit later on he got off on a tangent about working on his grandpa's farm and shooting animals with a BB gun and being told to drive the car because his grandpa didn't realize he was only twelve, and then he paused and feigned confusion and said, "Was there a point to this?" And the class just roared with laughter again and again and I laughed again even though I'd heard it all before, because I was experiencing it freshly, vicariously through them. And it just occurred to me as I was scripting out what to write here that choosing an institute class based solely on its humor content was probably not the wisest or most spiritually mature thing I've ever done. One day Mackenzie asked, "Why don't you ask a girl out, homeslice?" The term "homeslice" always makes me think of pizza, so I take it as a huge compliment. Anyway, in answer to her question, I didn't know whether to launch into several paragraphs of explanation, or choose from one of a dozen snarky one-liners, or what. So I finally just said "Because I hate dating". That's very vague and kind of goes without saying because everyone hates dating. I have never once in my adult life heard anyone say anything remotely positive about dating. The closest they ever come is laughing and having a positive attitude about the fact that it sucks. She then asked, "Then how are you going to get a girlfriend?" I was reminded of this story that I haven't shared for a long time so maybe no one reading this has read it. I just copy-pasted it from the last place I wrote it down and then made a couple of minor edits. For Thanksgiving break in 2012 I went to eat and watch "Psych" with my grandparents in Idaho. One night, either Thanksgiving itself or the night after, I was in the living room reading a book when the gorgeous young lady next door came over with her three little kids. She'd brought us baggies of homemade treats, and I don't remember what was in them aside from Rice Krispies, but dang they were good. She talked with my grandmother while her kids played, and I didn't have anything to contribute so I just kept reading my book. Within two minutes she turned to me and said, "You know you have to talk to get a girlfriend, right?" I thought that was really funny. I still think it's really funny. Now, of course, thanks to my previous job, I know that I have a monotone robot voice that makes people hang up on me, so talking probably depletes any chance I may otherwise have. Anyway, Mackenzie volunteered her services as a wingperson. I asked if she has magic powers. She said no. I declined her offer. She changed her mind and decided she does have magic powers after all. I asked what she's going to do. She said don't worry about it. I am going to worry about it, and I'm probably going to resist her every step of the way, because we were born to be friendly adversaries. I realized this when I had a dream about us leading armies against each other and then Tammy Wynette singing a song about it. One time I told her about that dream and she thought I was making it up. She's probably going to read this too. Hi, Mackenzie, if that's even your real name, which it isn't. Alvin and the Chipmunks - Bette Davis EyesI love Alvin and the Chipmunks and I don't care who knows it. I've collected almost all of their albums, most of them downloaded for free without guilt because they were long out of print. I feel that Ross Bagdasarian Sr. was a creative genius and is enjoying a rich reward in heaven for his contribution to the world. Sometimes, their covers sound significantly better than the originals, in my opinion, and this is one of them. MackenzieBoth of my long-term readers will remember that I used to occasionally write about a person named Mackenzie, and will have noticed that I have not written about her for a while, and may have wondered why. One reason is that she's been gone for like a month. Another reason, prior to that one, is best explained with the relevant anecdote. One day Bob was giving me a ride to a thing and we were discussing career aspirations. He mentioned having read a couple of my blog posts and enjoyed them. I had no idea how he would have found my blog, since he hadn't liked the page where I share it, and I assumed someone must have shown it to him. “Did someone show it to you?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. Then there was only one mutual acquaintance I could think of who knew about it and might have shown it to him. “Who, Seth?” I asked. “No,” he said, “actually it was Mackenzie.” Well, I am not unaware that the Internet is connected with the real world and can have consequences in that realm, and if I had been I would have been cured of that when this same sort of thing happened to me last year. I don't write anything here that I care if the whole world knows, and in fact I hold back on writing some things that the whole world really doesn't want to know. So it was not a total disaster that Mackenzie had discovered my blog and, as Bob further explained, read everything I wrote about her and recognized herself despite my clever use of a pseudonym, but it was highly unexpected because I didn't think she would ever bother to look at it. I thought her perceived apathy would offer a level of protection in that regard. Then Bob told her that he had told me, and she got mad at him, and then he told me that he had told her that he had told me, and I got mad at him too, but I kept it to myself because she was already mad at him and I didn't want to totally ruin his day. But this ruined everything because now that she knew that I knew that she knew, she would be unable to trust that my writings were pure and unbiased. So I laid off them for a while. Then, as mentioned, she left for a while more. Now, as you may have already guessed, she has returned. At home evening this past week she bounded over to me with a big grin on her face and announced, “I've discovered my new favorite activity.” I wanted to make a witty guess as to what this may be, but the only thing that came to mind was “killing cats” and that wasn't really witty, just sick. She continued, “When guys come and talk to me, I casually mention having a boyfriend and see how long it takes them to leave. That guy over there just set the record; thirty seconds.” Around this exact time it began to dawn on me how blessed I am for not having done that. We had a lot of time to talk that evening, and finally I broached the topic of her having read about herself on my blog. Neither of us had ever mentioned it, and I had been holding onto a ridiculous hope that she would forget that I knew that she knew so that she could trust me to be unbiased. Now she explained, “I didn't mind it, but I told my sister, and she told my mom, and she thought you were a stalker.” Then she asked, “Does 'Debbie' know that you write about her too?” Yes, she does, because I asked permission to post that picture of her and me that one time, but to my knowledge she never bothered to actually read that post even though I shared it with her afterward. I think that in this case her apathy really does provide a level of protection. But as of this week, she and her mom both already think I'm a stalker anyway. DebbieAs Debbie and I walked home from volleyball, we passed by some attractive trees and flowers. She said, “These plants are linda [“beautiful” in Spanish]”. That's one of like five Spanish words that she knows. She has a fondness for dismissing compliments by redirecting them to my mom, so I decided to emulate her. “Tu madre es linda,” I said. She stared at me. “Your mom?” “No, tuya.” “How do you know that?” she said, and started to laugh. “Been spending some time on Bookface [sic], have you?” Playing along with this silly notion that I had been admiring her mom's Facebook pictures, I pretended to be embarrassed and try to change the subject. "This is the best time of day, isn't it?" I said. "It's finally cooled off, after being hot all day, but it isn't dark yet..." This made her laugh harder. “Do you know my dad's name too?” She laughed and laughed and laughed. I didn't fully understand the source of her mirth until the next day when we walked to institute with her neighbor and she related a garbled version of the story to him. “...And then he said something like 'Your mom's name is Linda,'” she explained, laughing again. Oh. I explained what I had actually meant by it and how I was just kidding around. Fortunately she believed me, which she indicated by smiling and saying “Uh-huh, sure.” The Mormon SectionI don't feel like writing this section this week. Actually, I didn't feel like writing a post at all this week. Be grateful that you got one anyway. Yaz - State Farm (Extended Version)I like this song. That's all I have to say about it. Newly Posted EssaysThese are from my recently concluded Creative Non-Fiction Writing class. Long after this post has faded into the mists of time, they will still also be readily accessible from the Essays page. The professor, who is a published creative non-fiction author and whose job it is to know about this stuff, likes them, so if you don't, you're wrong. Ass Burgers In Defense of Pickup Lines Chasing Kelsey Also, though my novel "Space Girls" has not been published and won't be until at least 2020, it has already garnered blurbs from several people. Zack, Prince Among MenI have been most negligent in failing to mention the great act of kindness that was performed for me a few weeks ago when, after waiting at a red light, I rode my bike into a crosswalk and one of the pedals immediately popped off. As I swore and hastily retreated back to the sidewalk, a ginger-bearded guy named Zack pulled up with his wife Katie or Kathy and baby whose name I forget (Luke maybe?) and offered to give me and the bike a ride home. Almost immediately, however, he thought better of that idea and decided they should take me to his friend's bike shop to get it fixed instead. I accepted because I was broke and figured he would be blessed for his generosity. Out of consideration I just took an old pedal that doesn't match the other one at all, instead of a new set, and now whenever I see it I will remember what a great guy Zack is. Jewish Skin CareOn Memorial Day, I was looking for a copy of "A Giraffe and a Half" by Shel Silverstein, which is not to be found at the library or at Hasting's. I got desperate enough to try "Fun Unlimited" at the mall, which didn't have it either, and on my way out I was intercepted by a girl visiting from Israel to sell skin care products from the Dead Sea. "You there, may I have a few moments of your time?" she called out. "Are you married? You have girlfriend? Of course, you have seven girlfriends, one for each day of the week, yes?" Her warm demeanor and smooth sales tactics, in conjunction with her ethnicity and broken English that made me extra cautious to not accidentally be racist, kept me riveted, grinning like an idiot as she held my arm and rubbed it with this stuff, even as I realized that it was way too expensive for me at this time. She twisted my arm by offering a huge time-sensitive discount. I didn't believe for a moment that this was exclusive for me and needed to be kept a secret, of course, but still... I don't worry much about my appearance, but her description of what this would do to my skin sounded exquisite... Another determining factor was her promise that if I bought it she would take me to two movies. I realized then that there were two branching paths available, and one involved gaining a new friend from another country, culture and religion, and the other involved never seeing her again, and the former would hopefully be worth [redacted] dollars. So with any luck, I just bought a friend. She has my number and if she doesn't keep her commitment, I know where she works. So that's how I ended up with less than fifteen dollars to live off of for two weeks. Fortunately I've had plenty of practice at that sort of thing. StrineThat evening I found out there's an Australian person in the ward combined with my ward, and I would have met her a lot sooner if I were attending my ward, but life is full of trade offs like that. I thought at first that she was British, which would have lent an amusing irony to the American flag she made for Memorial Day out of marshmallows, grapes, and blueberries. Since she's from a white English-speaking country (sort of; see below), I allowed myself to be sort of racist and listen to her talk just because of her accent, and I decided that asking a ton of questions about the accuracy of Australian stereotypes was worth the risk of annoying her and ruining a potential friendship. There was no need to worry, though, because when I decided that enough was enough, she said "Come on, what else you got?" So I asked her if she could arrange to teach us all Strine. And that was shamelessly disingenuous, since mainly I wanted to show off how much I already know from David Morgan-Mar's podcast interview with Professor Jack Bandicoot, head of the Department of Australian English at the University of Sydney. DMM: No doubt you are aware of the fact that many people around the globe regard the Australian dialect as being so full of peculiarities as to be almost opaque to comprehension. Prof. Bandicoot: Indeed, yes. DMM: As an expert in the subject, is there any truth to this reputation? Prof. Bandicoot: No, it's a complete furphy. DMM: So as a country, what can we do about it? Should we just cop it sweet? Prof. Bandicoot: No, bugger that for a joke. We can't have mug lairs telling porkies about us like that. I mean, fair crack of the whip! Debbie My New BFFDebbie was without roommates for two days and told me in a commiserating tone, "Now I know how awful it is." That's not the word I would use. When I came home from New York at the end of last summer to find my roommates in the process of moving, I was so happy that I started singing to the tune of a famous Willy Nelson song, "All alone again... I can't wait to be all alone again..." I thought I was going to get roommates this month, since the "For Rent" sign came down weeks ago, but here I am still alone and that's more than okay with me. The drawback of having to pay everything for utilities myself is more than outweighed by the benefits of playing my music as loud as I want, having silence whenever I want, walking around naked if I want to, sleeping on the couch every night, praying out loud wherever and whenever I want, never getting woken up by people talking or playing video games at stupid a.m., and not being excluded from social events in my own home. My roommates were great guys, of course. The only problem was that they were people. Because of Memorial Day, the campus library where I would normally go to use the computer was closed on Sunday, so I was faced with the dilemma of choosing which friend to exploit for the use of their laptop, and I chose Debbie because I don't get to see her often enough anymore since she left the best ward ever. I was going to just walk over but she insisted on coming to get me because of the rain. I didn't realize at the time that she had gotten roommates by now because none of them were home when we got there. She lingered nearby to make sure I didn't access her novel or do anything that would contract malware. She apologized for the slowness of her computer, but that was all right because I was in no hurry to leave. When I did, she insisted on driving me again. As soon as she dropped me off I took an eight block walk just to spite her. The next day I remembered some more things I needed to do, so I went over again, and this time she did her makeup in the kitchen right next to me. I asked, "Do you always do your makeup in the kitchen?" She said, "No, but it isn't polite to desert a guest." Then she came over into the living room where I was to plug in her curling iron and do her hair. With all this going on I found it difficult to remain focused on the tasks at hand, as I felt fascinated to observe what seemed like forbidden and secret rituals. I saw her putting makeup on a guy's face in a talent show (and I so desperately wish I could post it on YouTube without engendering his lifelong hatred) but this was the real deal. But I also felt betrayed because all this time I thought the curl in her hair came naturally. I wonder how many other things I thought I knew about her are just smoke in the wind. A couple days later, normal computer access restored, I had the temerity to call and invite myself over just because I was having a horrible day and wanted to talk. This time her hair looked different and she was glistening all over. She said that was from running on a treadmill. We talked about the horrible thing that was going on and then shifted to more pleasant topics, like psychology. She talked about things like how if the doctor consistently rings a bell before tapping someone on the knee, they become conditioned to kick reflexively whenever they hear the bell, without the tap. "So," I said, "stuff like that is accessing the more primitive parts of human brains." "Yep," she agreed. So, I thought but didn't dare say, that's just one more proof that we're a product of evolution. She doesn't like the idea of human evolution because she thinks it precludes morality. Someday I will build up the courage to gently correct her misconceptions about that. Adam Sandler - Love StinksThis is my second favorite scene/song from "The Wedding Singer" (my first favorite is not appropriate to share with a family audience). I think the fat man looks like Paul McCartney. Am I the only one who thinks that? Also, whoever did the Spanish subtitles took some creative liberties with the refrain. My New Job ContinuedI've become a bit more talkative at work, but I do a lot of smiling and nodding when people talk to me because I still worry about getting in trouble. "Thank God for Starbucks, right Christopher?" Jill said one morning. I smiled and nodded. I've never touched a drop of coffee, but if she likes that sort of thing then that's the sort of thing she likes, so good for her. One day she just said "Right Christopher?" and I smiled and nodded despite having no clue what she had said just prior, if anything. She announced, "Christopher is going to be a wonderful husband someday. He just agrees with everything I say." I smiled and nodded again, thinking, Is that a proposal? I think I should at least meet your kids first. On my other side, Carl replied, "And then there's me. 'Bite me.'" At work on Friday, someone was making the last call that we needed for our quota on a certain project and so everyone else on that project just sat there and waited. A couple of ladies next to me started talking to each other and found out that they both have fifteen year old sons with Asperger's. This was slightly shocking since I thought they were both just a few years older than me. Anyway, they were engrossed in that so I didn't butt in, but then the call was suspended partway through and we had to get to dialing again, and then someone else started what would hopefully be the last call for real this time, and I told them that I have Asperger's too. One of them was like, "Ah, I thought maybe. You remind me of my son." The other one was like, "I never would have guessed!" But they both said that this revelation gave them hope for their sons' futures. I decided not to ruin the moment by mentioning that my life has only recently ceased to be a train wreck and that I still have fewer romantic prospects than Jon Arbuckle. I decided to just be like So, I really want to give them advice and help them out and stuff, but I don't feel that I'm qualified to do so because I have no right to assume that my experience is the same as those of their sons. This is exactly why, as I said last week, I don't want to become a spokesperson for Asperger's. Their sons are in different situations anyway, as one of them is smart but failing school because he hates it while the other is in special ed because he has the mind of a five year old. He has a lot of other stuff wrong with him too. Mental illness often travels in packs. Depression, in particular, more often than not comes as a free bonus along with virtually any other disorder, because why not? But anyway, that was just a cool experience which is why I'm mentioning it here. Mackenzie the FeministMackenzie agreed to come to my institute class with me, and unlike everyone else who ever agrees to do something with me, didn't cancel immediately prior to it. When she texted me half an hour before I was like Ah, that will be Mackenzie canceling on me, but she was just offering to pick me up, probably because it was raining. She's super feminist so, as a cruel joke, I held my coat up over her head to keep the rain off her as we were heading to the building. She was like "No, no, I'm fine" and ran away. I always feel like I'm walking on pins and needles to not say or do anything that will accidentally be offensive to my feminist friends, but I relaxed around her after I realized how much fun it is whenever we clash, either verbally or in sporting events. Afterward as she drove us home and we were talking and she fell silent I mused, "I've realized that I don't need to worry about your silences anymore, because I used to think it meant you didn't like what I'd said, but now I know that if you don't like what I've said, you'll tell me." "Yep," she said. "You're very outspoken." "I don't like that word," she said, her voice rising. "It means someone is like, speaking out of turn, and I feel like it's mostly used on girls, and -" "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that, I just meant you speak your mind instead of being silent -" "I know, but it has connotations of speaking out of turn -" "I meant it as a compliment, I'm sorry -" "You don't need to apologize for everything." "But you just flipped out on me." Milo's Grand Adventure"Milo's Grand Adventure" is the working title of my book about aliens invading in the fourteenth century. It probably shouldn't be the final title because Milo has sort of been demoted to a supporting character and it doesn't really fit the tone. Milo is a dragon, named after my dog and lifted from a picture that my classmate drew for me in fifth grade in exchange for a McDonald's Galidor toy piece that I found on the playground. I wish I could find that picture now. When I first started thinking of fantasy adventures about this dragon and some other characters, it was all very cliché stuff about a magical land overrun by a villain and the heroes going on an epic quest to defeat him. When I started writing it down circa seventh or eighth grade, it was part of my awful attempts to mimic Douglas Adams' writing style, so if it had been comprehensible it would have been a very goofy and lighthearted tone. Things have changed since I decided to set the story in a real time and place and bring aliens into it. It's more dark and serious now than either its earlier incarnations or my current only finished novel, "Space Girls" (also a working title), which could even be considered a comedy except that I don't dare because to me that implies making a value judgment that my own work is funny. "Space Girls" attempts to address some deep messages and serious topics but keeps them low-key so as not to be pretentious. "Milo's Grand Adventure", for whatever reason, is turning out to be more serious, and I guess I just have to deal with that. It explores questions that I became curious about, such as "What was it like to be a lesbian in the Middle Ages?"* "What was it like to become an agnostic in the Middle Ages?"** "What was it like to have chronic depression in the Middle Ages?"*** "Did women shave their legs in the Middle Ages?"**** And Milo is no longer so much a wisecracking comic relief character as a deadpan, apathetic chaotic neutral character. *Because obviously LGBT people have always existed, but the vocabulary and concepts have evolved drastically and mostly just within the past couple centuries, so I'm curious about how that affected people's perceptions of reality. How would a person that today we would consider "lesbian" feel in an era when the concept of "being a lesbian" simply didn't exist, and even saying "I like women" would have been beyond anyone's comprehension including her own? **Did agnostics and atheists just keep their doubts to themselves so they wouldn't get burned at the stake, or did they not even exist? It has been said that Darwin made it possible to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist", meaning that previously there wasn't much of a rational basis for denying the existence of God because you couldn't explain the existence of anything without it. I'd be surprised if no one who lived through the Great Mortality (as they called the Black Death) started to question God's benevolence, though. ***Well, you'd have better kept that to yourself too, because the medical diagnosis was "demon" and the treatment was to incarcerate, beat, and/or starve the depressed person to drive it out. Learning this confirmed how much I hate humanity. ****No. A lot of movies are highly inaccurate on this point. My movie adaptation will not be. I was actually just curious about this one because I reasoned that a woman being raised from infancy by a dragon to be an amoral killing machine probably wouldn't bother to shave her legs, but I didn't know if that would set her apart from normal women of the time or not. "Space Girls", currently weighing in around 460 pages, is much too long for a first-time author to get published. "Milo's Grand Adventure" will be much shorter and my hope is to get it published first and help pave the way toward that end. But if it becomes super popular and then I publish "Space Girls", people might be confused and angered by the huge shift in tone. I suppose that's a risk I'll just have to take. Modern Romance
Chapter 3 - Online dating has its ups and downs but ideally should just be a first step and at some point lead to getting off the internet. Chapter 4 - People are almost paralyzed by the wealth of options they have these days, and afraid to commit to someone when someone else they like more could be just around the corner. Chapter 5 - Japan is doomed because no one wants to reproduce, while Argentina is a haven for misogyny, but what they have in common is they're both full of perverts. Chapter 6 - Your statistical odds of finding a partner who will never cheat on you are pretty abysmal. In France, people are okay with that. Chapter 7 - Passionate love fades after twelve to eighteen months and is then hopefully replaced by companionate love, which isn't as great, but reaps far more over a lifetime. Conclusion - I'm a comedian, but that doesn't mean I can't be thoughtful and introspective. After reading this, I agreed with the author's conviction that all this modern technology is no more inherently bad or disruptive than the telephone or the television or anything else. Although the games that people play with dating are stupid, there's nothing wrong with bringing texting and stuff into it. Texting is not the problem. People are the problem. The Mormon Section(Continued from "Modern Romance") In any case, we all ought to remember that dating is not a holy and immutable eternal principle, but a rather recent invention and a means to an end. There's no reason to pretend the means shouldn't be allowed to evolve. I'm 99% percent positive that Jesus never went on a date. Mary Magdalene: So, Jesus of Nazareth asked me out. Martha: Oh, wow, what did you say? Mary Magdalene: I said I was busy. He seems nice and everything, but he's just so plain-looking. Besides, I'm not really into carpenters. I want to marry someone with a future. Martha: Yeah. Well, I'm going out with Judas Iscariot again tomorrow. Mary Magdalene: You have all the luck. (No sacrilege intended. Please don't stone me.) This topic was also addressed somewhat in an "Adventures in Odyssey" episode where Connie and Eugene went back in time to see baby Jesus. Connie: I'm afraid that Roman centurion is going to ask me on a date! Eugene: Don't be silly. They didn't go on 'dates' in first century Palestine. Connie: Oh, thank goodness. Eugene: However, he might offer to buy you from me. Boots Walker - They're HereToday: a continuation of the alien invasion theme started last week, with this novelty single from 1967. |
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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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