I almost feel like I should be grateful to this fascist regime because protesting against it has given me a purpose and brought me together with a community of beautiful humans. I moved to the Salt Lake area to be closer to friends I already had, but now I never see them, and I see new ones almost every week instead. Whatever works, eh? Recently, though, we've branched off from protesting into doing monthly clothing and food drives. I can't take any credit for the idea or the logistics, but I contribute a little, and I show up and help run them. We did our second one today. It was already much bigger than the first, and quite a beautiful experience. I was less self-conscious and more proactive in talking to the people who showed up instead of waiting for a real adult to do it.

Any appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I've always tried to be a good, generous, and loving person. I have given to homeless people, but I can't afford to give to all of them I see, so I usually avoid eye contact because making eye contact and not giving them anything seems like a slap in the face, but I know treating them like they don't exist is also a slap in the face, so that eats me up inside. Anyway, I just wanted to say that being good, generous, and compassionate is not some radical new concept for me, but today was still a profound, transformative experience. I talked a lot to this one homeless woman who stuck around for a while. She clearly had some mental illness, and I didn't understand half of what she said, but she was still really fun to talk to. She radiated such goodness that despite her weathered face and missing teeth, I could honestly say she was beautiful to me. I felt so good to know that I helped to improve her life and the lives of others today.

I wish we could do more, of course. I wish we could give them all homes. It is extremely fucked up that we as a society have normalized letting mentally ill people become homeless and then treating them like parasites. If my own mental illness were a bit more severe, or if I hadn't been blessed to know the right people who have helped me out over the years, I could have shared their fate. I still might someday. I can't even imagine having the fortitude to live like that without killing myself. I hope society will someday provide everyone with what they need, and maybe the backlash against this fascist regime is what we need to move us in that direction. These clothing and food drives are a chance for us to show what we're for, not just what we're against, and maybe we can keep growing them bigger and drawing in more people and doing more things until we've created heaven on Earth. I doubt that will happen in my lifetime, but I can be part of the push in that direction. I try to remember that my life not just as an end in itself, but also part of history that will affect future lives for better and for worse.

In unrelated news, the LDS missionaries in the Ogden Mission sent me an inspirational message last night even though I removed my records from the church in 2022 and moved out of those mission boundaries in 2024. I assume they found my number written down by the missionaries I briefly talked to before I moved. Actually, I was thinking about the ones I ran into in a parking lot and accepted a Book of Mormon from, but when I went to link to a post about it, I remembered that the post was actually about another occasion when I let a different companionship visit my apartment. I'm nice, okay? So anyway, this is the sort of thing that would piss off most ex-Mormons, but I'm cool with it. However they got my number, I trust that the missionaries acted out of love and a desire to enrich my life, and I appreciate that. I did feel enriched. As I've said before, I want everyone to be nice to the LDS missionaries, who for the most part are good kids sacrificing eighteen months or two years of their life to do what they believe is right. They're not to blame for everything that's wrong with the LDS Church. I hope these missionaries didn't text another ex-Mormon who was mean to them.

Midvale, Utah, this past week. Note the lack of anything resembling snow. I walked around the neighborhood barefoot today. If you don't believe in climate change, you are an idiot.

The earliest memory I can put a date on is watching "Lamb Chop's Special Chanukah" on December 17, 1995, when I was two and a half. (As I've said before, though, I think I can remember earlier in 1995 because I remember "Roll to Me" and "How Bizarre" playing on the radio constantly.) Because I'm obsessed with nostalgia and the strange passage of time, I've been waiting for December 17, 2025 to watch it again in a different basement on the other side of the country and see how much of it I recognized besides the fragments that stuck with me for thirty years. Answer: not much. I didn't even remember that it had songs. Still a blast from the past, though. I'm on the fence about whether it's good or charmingly bad. The plot makes little sense and the effects are not so special, but the songs are catchy and most of the humor is good or at least okay. It teaches kids about Chanukah and Jewish culture, so that's cool. (I'm not against those things just because I'm against Israel's war crimes and ethnic cleansing.) Feisty, witty little Lamb Chop is a very underrated character. Charlie Horse is a good foil - less sass, more mischief. Hush Puppy is maybe a little bit racist. That's how things go sometimes.

Between my age and the new millennium, the 90s are a different world, semi-ancient history compartmentalized from the rest of my life. The gap between 1995 and 2000 was eons longer than the gap between 2020 and 2025. It just was. I was too young to really appreciate the 90s while they were here, and lately I've mostly been getting into them through The X-Files and DOS games, but this was a more personal connection. ​The nostalgia factor is amplified by all of the lead actors (Shari Lewis, of course, with guest stars Pat Morita, Lloyd Bochner, and Alan Thicke) having been dead for years, even though three of the four were young enough to plausibly still be alive. That's how things go sometimes. I thought about doing a YouTube reaction video of the sort that I waste too much time watching, but it wasn't worth the effort for the likely size of my audience, just like it isn't worth the effort to organize my current rambling into a logical progression of thought. Here's a video to keep you occupied for almost an hour. Or not, your choice.

I hate most pictures of myself, but here's one that I don't. The composition is perfect, and if I do say so myself, it belongs in a history book next to the famous one of the Capitol police acting all concerned the words "Eat the Rich" scrawled in chalk after the first big protest (documented in this post.) This is the sign that I always take to ICE protests after someone let me keep it after I offered to hold it while she drew on the sidewalk. I never saw her again.

Yesterday I went straight from an ICE protest at Home Deport to a conversion therapy protest at the Capitol, so I still had this sign with me as I passed through Temple Square like I usually do to get to the Capitol. I was reminded of an incident from my first protest against Trump's Muslim ban in 2017 (which started at the very same federal building in the picture), when I was still Mormon and had to commute from a different city. Here's the relevant excerpt from the relevant blog post, with its horrible grammar intact:

Ah yes, I remember when that was my most traumatizing encounter with police. Ha. Ha ha.

Actually, until I looked it up just now, I had forgotten about the "Even if you're just walking through," but if I had remembered it, that wouldn't have stopped me from intentionally keeping the "Oh Boy... Nazis" side of my sign facing out as I walked through Temple Square both ways. Since I'm not Mormon anymore, I can say "Fuck those guys" without feeling guilty. Fuck those guys. Anyway, attendance was sparse this time, and I don't think any of the ten people I saw took any notice of me. On the way down Capitol Hill before I reached Temple Square, though, I saw several companionships of sister missionaries walking up to their apartments, and I thought it would be kind of funny to make sure the words on my sign were visible to them as we crossed paths. Most of them took no notice of me either, but I got a mumbled "Have a good day," a cheery "Hello!", and a head silently turned for a good look at my sign. Or maybe my ass, but probably my sign. This is just the part of my weekly political activism that I chose to share because it took little time or effort to write about.

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.