A week ago, I found the second shield beetle that had gotten through my poorly sealed window. Today, I've found eight. I am no longer willing to take time out of my day to catch and release them. Now they die. Sorry. I wish I didn't have to come to this. If I can find their exact entry points or a way to repel them, I'll do that. Sometimes I see them on the outside of my window and pound on it to scare them away before they get in.

At least I never burned grasshoppers to death for fun. How's that for a transition? That's how Kyle McKay, the official LDS Church "Historian" - I use scare quotes because, like most LDS Church leaders, his background is in business and law - recently opened his remarks at a stake conference in Oklahoma. He said that being under the bright lights with his glasses was like the "revenge of the grasshoppers" that he killed as a kid. Pretty messed up, but kids will be kids, I guess.

Then he called "This Little Light of Mine," which was recently added to the Mormon repertoire after decades of singing boring white Protestant hymns with as little enthusiasm as possible, "a song where white people try to sing like black people." If he'd stopped there, I wouldn't have seen a problem. Jokes about cultural differences are not inherently racist, and if anything, given the aforementioned context, this one sounds to me like it's poking fun at white people. But then he gave his impression of a white person singing like a black person and made up a whole conversation that didn't happen. "​I wanted to turn to him and say, 'You know you’re white. And he would say, 'No, I'm an African slave, is what I am, and I'm singing 'Swanee River.'" In case you're unaware, "Swanee River" is a racist minstrel song. I have no idea why he thought this imaginary conversation needed to be shared. He seemed to be under the influence of something, and I don't mean the Holy Ghost.

I have nothing personal against McKay, whom I heard from at an institute devotional before he was important and remember liking just fine. I appreciate his apology and don't think this incident makes him a bad person, but I think it demonstrates loud and clear that Mormon leaders are out of touch and uninspired - not, despite the straw man apologists will want to apply, because I expect them to be perfect, but because anyone actually speaking for God in the year 2026 would know better than to preface his remarks by joking about a racist song that most people born after the 1950s have probably never heard of. That is absolutely not an unreasonable standard to hold them to. This might be a good time to point out that McKay's primary qualification for Mormon leadership is being a former prophet's first cousin twice removed. His sole qualification for being a historian, meanwhile, is his loyalty to the LDS Church's narrative. If you think that's not a real qualification for being a historian, you're so right. This shows in a talk he gave in 2023 called "A Sure and Certain Foundation," which, while not racist, was pretty awful.

According to McKay, the abundance and strength of evidence and arguments against the LDS Church just prove that it's true. I'm not exaggerating.

​"As you increase your efforts to increase your testimony, you are likely to be confronted with reasons to doubt. President Nelson cautioned, 'Don’t pollute [your testimony] with false philosophies of unbelieving men and women.' Please hear me and understand: there will always be some reason or another to doubt the truthfulness of this church and gospel. There are arguments and evidence supporting the proposition that there is no God, that Jesus was just a good philosopher-teacher, that Joseph Smith was simply a charismatic storyteller and that this church and gospel are not true. This evidence, these arguments, are on some level appealing and believable, for there are many who believe them....

"In short, agency - that is, our ability, our responsibility, to choose for ourselves - is essential in all things, including and beginning with belief. In order to preserve our agency in the matter of belief, there must be opposites from which to choose - reasons to believe and reasons to doubt. God does not give us doubts, nor is He the author of error, but He allows them because it is absolutely critical that you and I choose for ourselves to believe or not to believe. There will never come a time, at least pre-Millennium, when God removes all reason to doubt, for to do so would be to remove all agency in the matter of belief.

"Now, I want to be clear - by acknowledging the existence of reasons to doubt, I am not legitimizing them, and I am certainly not advocating or excusing doubt itself. Jesus said, 'Doubt not.' In the face of reasons to doubt, doubt not.

"And what? Did you think Satan would throw up flimsy, easily dismissible reasons to doubt? No! They will be enticing and flattering. If the prince of darkness can transform himself into an angel of light, then surely he can put forth ideas and arguments that appear enlightened."

See, I told you I wasn't exaggerating. I hope you realize that any religion could make this same rebuttal to its critics with equal validity - Catholicism, Islam, Scientology, Heaven's Gate, etc. And I think it's so funny how Satan gets all the credit for deceiving people and destroying their testimonies when he has so much help from Mormon leaders themselves. Is Satan the one who inspired Brigham Young to undermine confidence in his prophetic authority by declaring on multiple occasions that mixed-race couples and their children should be put to death? But of course, following the party line, McKay grouped every uninspired or downright awful Mormon leaders have said or done under "mistakes" and "errors" and makes critics out to be the unreasonable ones for expecting them to be "perfect." He even turned the accusation around:

"And what about you? If the truthfulness of this Church or the truthfulness of or your beliefs were judged by your errors, would anyone ever believe what you believe? Would there have been fewer mistakes, fewer messes, if God had only restored His Church and gospel through you?"

Yes, I answer without hesitation, pausing only to add the caveat that this is entirely hypothetical because the "restoration" is a fiction to begin with. Like many, many people who aren't Joseph Smith, I've managed not to be a serial adulterer and sexual predator despite my imperfections. I'm aware that in real life, people might already be less inclined to listen to the spiritual wisdom I have to share because I don't always live by it, and that's too bad, but I've never claimed to speak for God, whether I'm sharing wisdom or being an asshole. My mistakes and messes reflect on me. Kyle McKay's racist flub reflects on God because he was speaking in his official capacity and was supposed to have the Holy Ghost telling him what to say, which he invoked right before he started talking about the grasshoppers. Of course, everyone has off days, and this wasn't so bad that I would consider it a smoking gun against the LDS Church on its own. It's just part of a long-term pattern, with countless much more concerning examples, of these men not having the inspiration they claim.

"Sometimes, in studying the Book of Mormon or presenting it to others, we are tempted to bypass its primary purpose and jump straight to the collateral conclusion that if the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith is a prophet and this is God’s church."

Off-topic, but I noticed this while I was skimming and wanted to comment because excuse me, this is exactly what the LDS Church taught us to do and what it teaches missionaries to teach prospective converts to do. Literally this exact line of reasoning is spelled out in Preach My Gospel. I'm so tired of rank-and-file Mormons being thrown under the bus for issues that come from the top. Of course, when the church tells us that David Whitmer testified of the Book of Mormon to the end of his life, it doesn't mention that he also said Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet, polygamy was an abomination, and the LDS Church was in apostasy. Anyway, McKay's point here was to suggest that we "read the book for its primary purpose - to convince the people of this earth that Jesus is the Christ." He went on,

"When you ask God, the Eternal Father, if these things are true - if Jesus is the Christ, if this is His gospel - it is essential that you ask in faith. Asking, and for that matter, reading from a position of doubt or skepticism will not summon a response from Heaven. 'Prove-it-to-me' prayers are seldom answered, and if they are, it is usually to the condemnation, even destruction, of the one demanding proof. Think Korihor and Sherem, for example. Asking in faith - even a particle of faith - implies that you at least have a desire to believe. Lead with this desire and 'let [it] work in you.'

"Asking in faith also means that you believe God will answer your prayers and give you the knowledge you desire. This faith is often demonstrated by what you do after you ask. Waiting patiently, unwaveringly for the witness you desire is part of asking in faith."

This is literally the definition of confirmation bias. Of course, McKay didn't come up with it on his own. Mormon epistemology is founded on confirmation bias.

"Brothers and sisters, I hope you realize that having perplexing questions that arise from reasons to doubt is not a problem. But please understand, finding answers to these perplexing questions ultimately is not the solution. The solution is a sure and certain foundation whereon if you build, you cannot fall. That foundation is Jesus Christ and His gospel, the fullness of which is found and taught in this Church."

Begging the question here - I mean actually begging the question, not the incorrect way everyone uses that term now. We must start with the conclusion that the fullness of Jesus Christ's gospel is found and taught in the LDS Church, and anything that gives us cause to doubt that conclusion, like whether the leaders of the LDS Church act anything like Jesus Christ would tell them to act if he were talking to them, is preemptively deemed irrelevant. Again, any religion could defend its truth claims with a similar fallacy. This is something I've noticed a lot lately. When I was a kid, prophets were supposed to direct us to Jesus, but now they cause so many problems for belief that we're told to just ignore them and focus on Jesus. My mom told me (back when I still spoke to her), "I made my covenants with God, not Spencer W. Kimball or Brigham Young." And where, pray tell, does she think everything she believes about covenants and God came from?

And oh, I didn't even realize this. McKay closed this talk with the story of Jane Elizabeth Manning maintaining her testimony of the LDS Church despite its policy that barred her from the temple because of the color of her skin, and the refusal of multiple prophets to make an exception for her.

"Her request was not granted. The Church President to whom she petitioned was John Taylor. He who once withstood what might have been his compelling reason to doubt now became part of what might have been Jane Manning’s compelling reason to doubt. Jane made similar petitions to Wilford Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith, who similarly upheld the race restrictions at the time. It would have been easy and understandable for Jane to pack it in, shut it down, and walk away. But she didn’t. Why? Because because her foundation was sure and certain in the truths that she had learned."

Very inspirational. Of course, like the other white Mormon leaders who use Jane's story as propaganda, he didn't say the policy was racist or wrong, he didn't mention that Joseph F. Smith eventually did compromise by having Jane sealed to Joseph Smith as a "Servitor" with a white woman as proxy, and he didn't mention that her surviving children left the church. Maybe if he'd ever really grappled with the LDS Church's treatment of black people instead of assuring himself that it was fine because a very small number of them believed in it anyway, he wouldn't have been so out of touch with reality that he thought his "Swanee River" joke would go over well. How's that for continuity?

I'm against the escalating war in the Middle East for the same reasons as most Americans, except for rising gas prices, which I'd be lying if I said I give much of a crap about. Surprisingly, my very conservative mother said years ago that gas prices weren't high enough to reflect the environmental damage it causes, and she wasn't wrong. Anyway, I'm still glad the Ayatollah and several members of his evil regime are dead. My position on that hasn't changed and won't change. I'm allowed to acknowledge the positives of illegal and destructive wars that I can't stop.

I went to a protest against the war yesterday, but I hung back noncommitally until I was sure the speakers wouldn't defend the evil regime. Of course, they didn't mention how it treats women and queer people or that it recently killed far more of its own citizens than American and Israeli bombs have, but they didn't say anything stupid about its sovereignty or right to exist either, so that's a win. They just said stuff I agree with about how war ruins people's lives and makes weapons manufacturers fabulously wealthy while we can't afford healthcare. There was a verbal altercation between a brown woman in a Ukraine flag and a loud, insufferable-looking white guy, after which the woman left, and I think that had something to do with why the organizer of the protest, a young Iranian-American, got up at the end and asked us to remember the people we're fighting for, and to respect Iranian-Americans who have a different perspective, and that this was for them, not us. She got some tepid applause, and she said she was relieved to not get booed off the stage. But yeah, I happen to know that some Iranians, including those actually in Iran at the present moment, are thrilled about this war. They hate the regime that much. They'd rather take their chances with the bombs than keep living under constant oppression with no end in sight.

Many of us then marched from the Federal Building up to the Capitol to joing a protest for women's rights, and I saw a Mormon sister missionary across the street filming us as we chanted anti-Trump slogans, so I assume she either agreed with us or just wanted to affirm her testimony of the wickedness of the last days. This second protest was almost over when I left because the speaker said something stupid about the former president of Venezuela. First of all, I thought it was a hell of a stretch to bring him up in the first place, as the speaker used the kidnapping of him and the First Lady as an example of Trump's disdain for women. But the part that made me leave was the speaker's false claim that Nicolas Maduro was "democratically elected." If that were true, it wouldn't make him less of a brutal dictator, but it's not true. He was an incumbent president who lost re-election by a significant margin and refused to leave office - you know, just like Trump tried to do, but he got away with it because Venezuela's highest court is even more corrupt than the USA's. I hope the speaker was just laughably ignorant, not lying out of a compulsion to shield socialist governments from criticism, but it pissed me off a little either way.

Someone at this protest gave me a handout for an activist study group hosted by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization to "discuss how we can build the socialisty movement with Marxism-Leninism!" I would be interested in attending with an open mind, except that I'd probably find every single person there insufferable. Mind you, I'll still stand with them against fascists any day of the week. It's just so refreshing to have the integrity and clarity to criticize both sides, even though one side is clearly much, much worse.

A friend sent me this music video the other day. The music and the video were both made with AI in 32 hours, and they're very much the opposite of "slop" (though I readily acknowledge that most of what's called "AI slop" is, in fact, slop). Great tune, great lyrics, great shots. I'm blown away. My childhood dream of turning my daydreams into movies is closer than my more sensible adult self ever imagined. Of course,  it's also legitimately scary how good this video is. Soon it will be impossible to tell the difference between AI and reality, and I have no idea how or if society is going to adapt to that. The legal system already has safeguards in place against fabricated photographic or video evidence, but the average American who already believes everything they see in social media is about to get mind-screwed. There are also potential legal concerns about using actors' likenesses. I don't know much about that, but I know that Giselle from "Enchanted" isn't an official Disney Princess because Disney would have to pay Amy Adams every time they used her likeness, even in illustrated form, so it seems inevitable that sooner or later, someone is going to sue over their likeness appearing in an unauthorized music video. Hopefully not a really badass one like this, though.

Going back through the videos, I could see how much they've improved in only a year. A Pirates of the Caribbean music video from a year ago, "Dead Men Tell No Tales," is still good but looks and sounds more artificial. Unfortunately, going back through the videos is also how I discovered one about DOGE. I read the transcript instead of listening/watching, and it's Elon Musk bragging about how he'll root out all the corruption and waste in the government and send the perpetrators "Straight to Jail." I would have been happier not knowing that the guy behind these videos is MAGA. I couldn't resist trying to make him feel embarrassed for thinking that the richest man in the world would root out corruption and waste out of the goodness of his heart. I commented, "This aged like milk." Mic drop. Even MAGA, with its famous disdain for basic logic and objective reality, can't argue that point... can it?

This guy simply responded, "ikr." (On the remote chance that anyone for whom English is a second language is reading this, that means, "I know, right?") I actually respect that. So fine, okay, I'll separate the artist from the art. Yes, even though it may be controversial, I am calling him an "artist" because he puts a lot of work into these songs and videos, several of them are very, very good, and I don't know what else to call him. The world is better because these songs and videos are in it. The world is worse because of his politics, but his individual influence in that regard is probably negligible anyway. Just like mine. Heavy sigh.

I consider football the second most boring sport ever invented, but I've always enjoyed Super Bowl parties for the camaraderie, the food, and the funny commercials. This year, I would have gotten extra enjoyment from the halftime show that was successfully engineered to piss off racist conservative snowflakes. It pissed them off so much that the late Charlie Kirk's racist organization is putting on an alternate show, which was pathetic enough before they announced that Kid Rock was headlining it, which is exactly what liberals said they would do as a joke to make fun of them. Yes, conservatives are now officially a parody of themselves. This also serves as a reminder that the world is no worse off for not having Charlie Kirk in it. Don't come after me for being honest. Did you catch the leaked Zoom call of his widow giggling and gloating about merch sales two weeks after his death? I felt more grief when I stepped on a snail.

Alas, this year I was not invited to a Super Bowl party, possibly because my social circle has shifted from college students to people who have children in high school, and it doesn't stream anywhere for free, and I'm not patriotic enough to buy a Peacock subscription just for that. Still, I expect I'll have a delightful evening watching cartoons and listening to music. I've found that if I just tell myself a day is a holiday, it feels like one. I have simple pleasures. I have my new studio apartment to myself, I've partially adapted to the traffic noise, and in tangential but also exciting news, I now only take about forty minutes to fall asleep at night instead of two hours or more, possibly because I have space to not sit on my bed all day and make my brain associate it with activities besides sleep. Anyway, I'm sure people will be even less inclined than usual to take time out of their day to read my blog, and that's just one more reason why I'm disinclined to take time out of my day to write it, so here's the weekly post to keep up my streak, and now I'm done. I hope one of the teams that's playing today wins.

I quit Spotify Premium to protest the company running racist ICE recruitment ads. It's so desperate to get me back that it's offering me two months for free, which I intend to take before canceling again. I still did the Wrapped thing. I looked into the Unwrapped thing, but I couldn't figure out how to work it because none of the available GIFs looked entirely applicable to my situation. Anyway, I pride myself on my vast, eclectic music tastes, which give me far more opportunities for pleasure than you have if you're normal, so my favorite statistic was that I listened to 793 genres. That was even cooler than listening to 141,696 minutes (98 days). My top genres were desert blues, soundtrack, singer-songwriter, jazz, and oldies, none of which are represented in my top ten songs, and my listening age was 85 due to my proclivity for music from the late 50s. Yes, I am awesome, thanks for noticing. Without further ado, here's what I promised in the title.

Party like it's 1399! There's a shorter single edit, but why would I want that?

I regard Roxette's "Joyride" as one of the most perfect albums of all time, and this year I delved into the demos on the 30th anniversary edition. It's cool and refreshing to hear songs that are embedded into my psyche with different vocals (almost always by Per Gessel) and instrumentation. I kept coming back to this one because of the nostalgic Christmassy handbell sound before the chorus and the doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo after the badass guitar licks at the end that's done with a keyboard or something in the finished product but with a piano here.

This nostalgic banger made a long overdue appearance on Spotify this year, then disappeared again after a few months. It's literally greyed out on my Wrapped playlist. If the band got off Spotify to protest it running racist ICE recruitment ads, that would be one thing, but no, their other inferior songs are still there, damn it.

I love futuristic sounds from the past. Forward-looking nostalgia, or retrofuturism, or whatever. And of course I love planets and aliens. This track sounds appropriately cold and wistful.

I mentioned this jam months ago because I know it must have been an uncredited inspiration for the Beach Chant in the Mata Nui Online Game (2001). I really enjoyed getting high, sitting under a tree, and meditating to it until I couldn't feel my body.

This song is one of my favorites to listen to while I'm high.

I found this space disco group in 2020, and they disappeared from Spotify shortly thereafter. This year they came back, but alas, only with eleven tracks, which are missing some of my favorites. But at least I was so desperate for scraps that I gave this entirely un-space-related track a chance.

The finished product has superior instrumentation, but this version has a level of energy in the chorus that seems to have gotten lost. I imagine Per Gessel rocking out on top of a train like in a Bollywood song I saw once.

This song is so gay, I'm surprised Trump doesn't dance to it with his signature jerking-off-two-elephants move. I forget what late-show comedian I stole part of that joke from. Probably Jon Stewart, but don't quote me on that.

A catchy Algerian dance track from the late 80s, which I enjoy very much even though she could be singing "Death to Americans" for all I know.

After I canceled my Spotify Premium subscription, I earned the right to encourage other people to boycott platforms that run the racist ICE recruitment ads. I did so in a Reddit post. I acknowledged that boycotting them all completely may be unfeasible; for example, I don't see how I can cut YouTube videos out of my life, but I do feel even less guilty now about using an adblocker. Monica Torres of the Huffington Post then messaged me and asked if I'd be willing to use my real name and talk about my boycott plans for an upcoming story. I agreed, but she never got back to me, apparently because she decided to use someone named Caroline Eddy instead. Oh well. I loved this line: "The company declined to answer questions about how many people have canceled their subscriptions over this ad." That means a lot of people have canceled their subscriptions over this ad, and the company is embarrassed. The article explains why these boycotts are unlikely to be as successful as the Disney boycott that saved Jimmy Kimmel's job, and that sucks, but at least willing collaborators with secret police who kidnap people, shoot priests in the head, and tear-gas children aren't getting my money.

Speaking of fascism, I watched "Truth and Treason" this week. It's an Angel Studios movie about Helmuth Hübener, the Mormon teenager who (spoiler alert) was executed for sharing the truth about Nazi propaganda. Of course, as an ex-Mormon, he's still one of my heroes. The LDS Church deserves very little credit for his heroism. Its strategy in Nazi Germany was to appease the government and avoid drawing attention to itself. Just as Mormons in the US today support the MAGA movement with no cognitive dissonance, some Mormons in Germany then supported the Nazi Party and saw no contradiction with their beliefs. In both cases, I believe this represents an abysmal failure on the part of the church. My current religion, Unitarian Universalism, is also neutral on party politics, but nobody would think for one moment that they could accept its teachings and support Trump or Hitler. As a Mormon, I was supposed to be okay with worshiping alongside racist twats because "people aren't perfect" or some crap like that, but as a UU, it's literally not an issue at all.

So of course, the movie had to include Arthur Zander, Helmuth's fanatical Hitler-loving bishop. His character can even be framed as a powerful lesson for believing Mormons, as long as they lean fully on "people aren't perfect" and ignore their belief that God himself calls every bishop. The movie ends almost immediately after Helmuth's execution, so it doesn't cover the part where Bishop Zander posthumously excommunicated him for his treason against the government. I will say that it annoys me when critics say "the church" excommunicated Helmuth. It was literally just this Nazi bishop acting on his own. After the war, the First Presidency reinstated him. I really think that whole thing should have been mentioned in the credits where, in the typical vein of historical films, we get text blurbs about what became of the main characters. It also wouldn't have hurt to mention that after the war, Zander moved to Utah, coached youth soccer, and hid when historians showed up at his house.

In the movie, Helmuth talks about his hopes that when he shares the truth with people, they'll share it with more people, and eventually everyone will refuse to comply with the Nazi regime. That obviously didn't happen. It's difficult to see if his actions had the slightest effect on the regime. But he fought and paid dearly for his principles, and 83 years later, people are watching a movie about him and getting inspired. He reminds me of my own ambition in resisting my own fascist regime. I can't say whether my individual actions are making a tangible difference in this world  - I certainly hope so - but at least they're ensuring that I can live with myself when I die. Helmuth was also brilliant and full of potential, and I wonder what he would have accomplished if he'd grown up. It's tempting to think he would have deconstructed his way out of the LDS Church, but it's just as likely that he would have rivaled Hugh Nibley as an apologist and been the token German until Dieter Uchtdorf came along.