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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Incidentally, he and his wife had been separated for years. I wouldn't imply for a moment that everyone who's separated from their spouse is evil, but it's stupid that his very few defenders think having a wife who didn't love him is a point in his favor. And his kids will get over it too. They're set for life. They'll never suffer the deprivation that his victims did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of vigilante violence. In an ideal world, it wouldn't have been necessary because he would have been executed by the state after a fair trial. Scratch that - in an ideal world, he never would have profited from human suffering and death in the first place because the United States would have universal healthcare like every other developed country that exists.

Of course, one man's death doesn't fix the systemic problem that is health insurance companies, but I bet it will make his successor and other CEOs think a little harder about the way they treat us peons. If they didn't notice before how normal people feel about them, they absolutely have now. We can see from the effort that went into finding his killer and the absurd decision to charge him with terrorism that this one death has rattled our oligarchic overlords more than all the schoolchildren being mowed down every week in the United States (including on the same day). I've had it up to my eyeballs with obscenely rich douchebags doing whatever the hell they want, and it's only going to get worse in the immediate future now that the richest one of all has bought all three branches of government. President Musk, with the help of First Lady Trump, is going to give them even more tax cuts and repeal the few regulations that keep them from screwing the rest of us even more than they already are, and morons who've been brainwashed into thinking that people on food stamps are the source of their problems will cheer them on all the way. Brian Thompson's well-deserved removal from this planet is a small sliver of comfort as we head into that bitter reality.

So yeah, this is about as un-merry as I've ever felt during the Christmas season. The other reason is that there's no snow where I am. I think we've had snow on the ground for less than a total of twenty-four hours so far. It was fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. And this after I moved here just in time for a record-breaking heat wave that lasted a month. Tell me more about how climate change is a hoax. The good news is that my memoir is coming out by the end of this year. It's called Goodbye Mormonism, Hello World: My Slightly Pretentious Search for the Truths of Life, the Universe, and Everything. As you can guess, it's about my religious deconstruction and spiritual journey. I keep it focused on myself so I'm not preaching or telling people what to believe, but I wrote it to help people, and I flatter myself that it's more important now than ever. I'm really pleased with it. And because it has Mormonism in the title, I bet it will sell better than my first book.

PSA: I watched "Heretic" the other day and intend on writing a full review in the near future, perhaps after I've seen it again. I'm not sure yet how I feel about the third act, but the characters are great. Hugh Grant is a phenomenal villain, somehow equal parts charming and douchey. The missionaries are intelligent and resourceful beneath their surface naivete. The themes provoke a lot of thought and discussion. I recommend.

To reiterate for anyone out of the loop, I get high for spiritual purposes. The recreational aspect is just a (substantial) bonus. I was going to write a whole post to go with this, but I simply can't find the motivation. Every time I get high is more intense than the last, and attempting to describe it would be hopeless. I guess people just need to experience it for themselves. Or not. I don't encourage anyone to do drugs. I just try to break down the stigma and share my experiences. At this point, I think I can say that the gummies have permanently altered my brain. I was willing to take that risk because it's not like my brain was in great condition to begin with. I laugh more often now. I've always appreciated humor, but it rarely surprised me enough to trigger the laughter reflex. Now I lie awake at night laughing as I reminisce about a Key and Peele video I watched the previous day. (The lying awake part isn't new. If I can't sleep either way, I may as well enjoy it.) So that's been a delightful surprise.

This time, I felt so blissful and so out of my body that I think my fear of death is almost entirely gone. In those moments it seemed so obvious to me that I don't have consciousness, I am consciousness, and when the body I'm stuck inside stops working, I'll go somewhere else and it won't be a big deal. Then I had all these other profound thoughts and felt moved to reach out to someone I hadn't talked to since high school whose partner killed himself. And I also listened to some music. While I listened to the Michael Stearns track "Encounter," I imagined myself in a field at night seeing a spaceship, then in the woods knowing there were aliens all around me. It wasn't like a real vivid hallucination, perhaps because I'm not a very visual thinker to begin with, but it was intense. I was thinking, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God... It was like a VR horror game that you know isn't real but still get you swept up in the moment. Frightening, but in the best way. And then I just listened to some other stuff that came to mind.

I had the best experience yet getting high last week, but I'm not getting high today because I've decided to take a break for at least two weeks so I don't destroy my brain's pleasure center. Some of my family members are wary about me using drugs, and some people get addicted and get into worse drugs and ruin their lives and stuff, and I ought to be more cautious about that. To be clear, though a part of me does enjoy telling people I got high because it's taboo and "bad," I don't do it for pleasure or to escape from my unpleasant emotions. I do get pleasure and escape from my unpleasant emotions, and I won't apologize for that, but I do it for spirituality. And though I can't prove it, I think the intentions and the preparation that I've brought to this have shaped the experiences I get out of it and made me less susceptable to the potential pitfalls. I came for spirituality, and I got it. I use the drugs as part of my journey, not a crutch or a shortcut. But drugs are not toys, and I'm sure they're not right for everyone even if they're right for me. I'm not encouraging anyone to use them.

This last time, I felt like I was in contact with the spirit world, reaching out to other people's consciousnesses, people I used to know and people I still know, learning about the plans we'd made in the premortal existence, apologizing for how I'd wronged them. I spoke to them with my thoughts. I'm sure none of them heard me. I'd love to know if any of them felt anything at all. I also got an impression that I might die in three days, and then I felt like I was pleading my case to some unseen, unheard personage (not God, I don't think, but maybe, who knows) about why I needed more time and could do so much more to bless people's lives while I'm here. I didn't die in three days, but I don't think that was ever really going to happen. I feel like I just needed to prove to myself how much I want to be here. (For now. After I do die, I sure as hell don't want to come back.) Even though it was just my own brain talking, it felt like a revelatory experience. I'm well aware that I might have just been delusional, but I've already lost much of my fear of death, made peace with a very traumatic past event, and made positive changes in my life as a result, so maybe the world could use more of that kind of delusions.

And I had another little psychic moment that helped to validate the experience for me. I'm not making any real effort to get a girlfriend, but once in a while I'll get on Bumble and swipe for a minute. I can always see that a few women have swiped right on me, but I can't see who they are because I won't pay for Premium, so I just have to hope I'll stumble across them in the natural course of things, which rarely happens. This time, I looked at the first woman who came up, reached out to her consciousness, and somehow found things to say about her profile for fifteen minutes or so. During this time I came to an implicit understanding that she had swiped right on me. And finally I was like Well, I'll feel pretty stupid if she didn't swipe right on me. I swiped right on her, and boom, we had a match. And then she never messaged me, but it was still cool. I also telepathically thanked a woman who had stopped messaging me for briefly coming into my life to tell me I had "the most soulful eyes." I also gently telepathically scolded a woman from Ukraine who said she was "apolitical" even though one American party supports her country and the other does not. I was nice about it, but I was in tears as I pleaded with her to take more civic responsibility.

I debated how much to share because this is my special personal experience that doesn't need to be broadcast to the world, but I do want to share things that might benefit and uplift others in their own spiritual quests. I decided to err on the side of not broadcasting it because I'm too lazy to try to describe this experience in words. You'd never be able to feel its intensity through words alone. So I'll just mention one more thing. I got the real or perceived revelation that Donald Trump chose to play a villainous role in this life so that others could have the opportunity to exercise moral goodness by fighting against him. Obviously I was inspired by the claims of near death experiencers that this life is like a play and we're all just performing roles. Whether my insight into Trump is objectively accurate, I can't say, but it makes me hate him less, so I'll stick with it. I thought, I hope I'm not a villain. And then I immediately thought, I am to some people.