I've never felt less like celebrating my country than I do now. A country that elects the worst person in the world twice after he's shown it exactly who he is deserves to be mocked, not celebrated. Still, its 250th birthday (which is obviously more significant than its 249th birthday or its 251st birthday) will only happen once, so I didn't boycott the festivities. I admit it was pretty fun to watch everything the orange taint did to promote himself for the occasion turn into a massive, abysmal failure - every music artist except Vanilla Ice refused to participate in his concert, his wrestling match was delayed by a thunderstorm, his newly renovated pool turned green, and his great American state fair shut down after all seven attendees got heat-related illnesses from that climate change thing they don't believe in. And today, DC residents were told to stay inside because his massive fireworks show made the air unbreathable, which is a pretty good analogy for everything he does to suck his own dick at our expense.

In Salt Lake City, fireworks are banned because Utah is experiencing the largest wildfires in state history from that climate change thing it doesn't believe in. What we really need is the largest data center in the country to give us more water. Naturally, many Utahns responded to this restriction to protect people's homes from burning down the same way they responded when they were told to wear masks in public so they didn't kill people during a global pandemic. The entitlement is simply nauseating and another symptom of the rot going to the core of this country that gave us two terms of President Trump. I want to scream in their faces that they can shove their "liberty" up their self-absorbed asses. As citizens of a society composed primarily of other people, they do not have a right, constitutional or otherwise, to set off explosives in areas with a high fire risk, no matter how pretty they think the colors are, and frankly, if they feel that strongly about fireworks, they have the minds of toddlers, which explains a lot. I find that the novelty of fireworks wears off after a few seconds, I hate not being able to sleep for a week in July because my douchebag neighbors are setting them off every night, and there's also the small matter of animals, babies, and veterans being traumatized just so people can see the pretty colors.

So anyway, Salt Lake City did a drone show instead. The lady next to me said "This is so much cooler than fireworks" at least thrice, and she wasn't wrong. I lived in the moment and watched it instead of filming on my phone, but I did take pictures of the beginning and the end when it paused for suitable intervals.

In between, the drones shifted and formed events and icons from American history - the Boston tea party, John Hancock's signature, the first airplane, the (fake) moon landing, ​the flag raising on Iwo Jima, Rosie the Riveter, Elvis, Michael Jackson, baseball, football, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty. They depicted Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, which was a nice way to acknowledge the worst parts of American history without bringing down the mood. I certainly don't expect a lot of nuance from a drone show, but it shouldn't be pure propaganda, either. It depicted protesters holding signs, with no clear implication of any specific protest, apparently to convey the message that protesters have made various things better throughout history. I was with some of the friends I've made through protesting, and of course I said, "That's us! That's us!" That is one of the most important rights we have in the US, which is why the orange taint has gone to great lengths to take it away, though courts and grand juries have stopped him at almost every turn. Our strong tradition of not having dictators gives us an advantage over wannabe dictators. Russians have no such tradition, and they have no legal right to gather for protests, but now that they have to wait in line for ten hours to get fuel because Ukraine is destroying their infrastructure, they have lots of time to discuss how much Putin sucks.

The drone show was such an impressive display of technology that it made me reflect on how fast we're moving into the future. I spend a lot of time living in the future because the present sucks. I dream of a world where climate change has been conquered, science and technology have solved most of our problems, and people have learned to get along and not suck. That last part is the least plausible and the most important. I love the progress of technology I'm observing, but the world is still kind of a dystopian nightmare. I guess all I can do about that is be nice to people and spread my message of spirituality in spite of their disinterest.

I also went to a free breakfast near the Capitol, wearing my Bernie Sanders/AOC shirt and the keffiyeh that was gifted to me by a Palestinian gentleman, which has done wonders to shield my face and neck from the heat. I stood in line for some time, and one of the organizers, an old man, came through the line apologizing for the wait. He stared at me for an uncomfortable few seconds, then was like, "You're protecting your head. That's smart." I was like, "Yep." He introduced himself and asked my name. He didn't do that for the people in front of me or behind me. I guess I made him uncomfortable with my visible display of Palestinian culture, and he made a concerted effort to be polite and welcoming anyway. Good for him! I was glad I didn't see any MAGA hats. Tolerance does not include hate groups.

​The state of the US on its 250th birthday can be summarized by a couple of viral images of Black people being crowded on public transportation by some of the 400 masked white supremacists, emboldened by the man that most of my family voted for, on their way to march at the Capitol. These pictures will be in history books, and children will be baffled that Americans in the year of our Lord 2026 put up with this shit.

There is hope in these image, though. These pimples on Satan's scrotum are hiding their faces because even with their cult controlling every branch of the government, they know their views are wildly unpopular and would result in well-deserved consequences, legal and otherwise. Hitler's followers didn't hide their faces. Trump's followers have to. These same people claimed that masks made it impossible for them to breathe during the pandemic, and now they're covering most of their faces in skintight fabric in triple-degree heat. It's a pity they were able to breathe after all, but at least they were uncomfortable. The duty of every true American is to make sure they continue to be uncomfortable for the rest of their pathetic lives.

Speaking of masked white supremacists, the other thing I did to celebrate yesterday was attend a dance party outside the ICE warehouse that's apparently being sold because of public pressure or Kristi Noem's financial scandal or something, I don't know, but I'm not complaining. ICE agents had to sit in the parking lot and listen to our taunts for as long as we were there, though I didn't stay too late because I just turned 33 and I'm ready for the nursing home. A Flock camera in the parking lot of the warehouse across the street from us was like, "Attention, you are trespassing. Please leave the area. You are under surveillance, and you have been recorded." I'm surprised I don't remember the exact words because the damn thing said them over a hundred times despite us not trespassing anywhere at any point. Again, this drove home what a dystopian nightmare we're living in. That machine was straight out of an unpleasant sci-fi. That's not an optimistic note to end on, so here's a better one: ICE agents will be unemployable for the rest of their pathetic lives after this regime finishes collapsing.

My 33rd birthday is in two days. I know I won't likely ever have another birthday, or another day of my life, period, as great as the one last year when I went to a "Weird Al" Yankovic concert and then met him in person. I accept that. Life is not a steady progression from good to better, and any day that doesn't suck is good enough.

​I was going to have a party at the park today, but a friend asked me to reschedule because her kid's birthday is today, and her kids love me a ridiculous amount and would have wanted to attend both. By "a ridiculous amount," I mean that this particular kid recently called me "Daddy" despite being old enough to know better and not even seeing me that often. Maybe she just hates her real dad, which I could relate to. (She did tell me once, "You're lucky you're not married so you don't have to fight with your wife all the time. My parents fight all the time, and it's not fair.") I don't know why kids love me so much without me trying. Mary hypothesizes that it's because I radiate calm. Anyway, I rescheduled for Friday, which made half of the people I'd invited unable to come. A couple of days in advance, I considered that maybe the kids would get sick and not come, meaning that I would have rescheduled for nothing. I told myself that I was being irrational, making up a scenario that hadn't happened yet and getting preemptively annoyed by it. And then that exact scenario happened.

I tried not to be annoyed because it's not really anyone's fault, and of course I feel bad for the kid having her whole birthday weekend ruined. When the mother asked how it went, I did let her know that a lot of people had been unable to come because I rescheduled, and she apologized, which I think is an appropriate response to negatively impacting someone by accident even if you couldn't have known. I didn't want her to feel awful, I just wanted her to be aware. Now I wonder if I was a dick to mention it at all and should have kept it to myself. Anyway, what happened to her kid is far from the worst thing that happens to kids in this world, but it reminded me nonetheless what a shitty parent the father god I was taught to believe in is. This kid's earthly mother would do anything to stop it, but Heavenly Father, who actually could stop it, is just like, "Sorry, you have to suffer because something something learning experience." And I'm supposed to worship this guy and regard him as the pinnacle of goodness and love because people say so.

Of course, I still got some people at my party - specifically, a few activists who all knew me and each other from protesting and a Mormon woman I met at a friend's wedding reception. That morning, in a Signal chat, I had chimed into an unflattering discussion about the LDS Church with a couple of fun facts - that it calls itself Israel and does a very shallow cultural appropriation of Judaism, and that it removed all pro-Israel rhetoric from its hymns and manuals in Germany to appease the Nazis. So now, in person, one of the activists asked me if I was an expert on Mormonism. My mouth said "Yeah" while my brain said "Oh shit." I didn't want to embarrass the Mormon woman by singling her out, so I just prayed silently as the activists' conversation shifted into Mormonism-bashing mode. Fortunately, someone thought to ask her before it went too far, though the phrasing of the question - "You're not LDS, are you?" - could have been better. Yes, I still have some Mormon friends. I can love people even if I don't agree with their lifestyle.

People brought brownies, pizza, fruit, and juice. Someone gave me a bottle of Merlot, which I was advised to save for "when it happens." I don't drink alcohol, but I haven't ruled out the possibility of drinking this if I ever figure out what "it" is, because of course I have absolutely no idea what they were talking about, wink wink. People also gave me a book, a Joker action figure, and a volleyball painted like Wilson from "Castaway." I had asked someone to bring a volleyball so we could play, but I didn't expect one as a gift. I wonder if I'd have gotten more food and gifts if more people had been able to come. Anyway, I got a little depressed because I didn't feel like I deserved the love these people gave me. I know I'm a good person, and they know I'm a good person because we protest for the same things, but I don't feel like I contribute enough to the world or their lives to be loved like that. Obviously, that's a me problem. Obviously, if I tell anyone that, they'll tell me not to feel that way because I'm great, as if that will solve the problem. Oh well.

I also felt a little depressed about aging. I'm still in my prime, but only for a couple more years, and then I face two options: die young, or experience my body slowly and painfully breaking down. The former option appeals to me more, but lately, my death anxiety has risen. I think death itself doesn't bother me as much as not having the slightest idea when it will happen. At any moment, it could be five minutes, five years, or fifty years away. A friend's brother-in-law just died from a blood clot. That could have been me. It still could be. Even if death is a wonderful and beautiful thing, as most people who have come close to it will attest, I don't like the idea of it catching me off-guard. Someone jumping out and yelling "Surprise!" at a random moment isn't much better than someone jumping out and yelling "Boo!" I waxed philosophical about this with a friend as we played with the volleyball, and he didn't resolve anything for me, but I felt like processing this together was an important part of the journey. Then he let me take a couple puffs of weed, and the trees and the lights and the sunset took on a vaguely artificial, enclosed quality, like a football field, that seemed to underscore the illusory nature of our time in this world.

On my actual birthday, I plan to watch the Mandalorian movie and go to dinner with a friend who couldn't make it that time. Tonight, since I'm free, I plan to celebrate the solstice by taking an edible, going back to the park, and experiencing the drum circle. If I get stabbed to death, oh well, I had to die sometime. I'm glad the days are going to start getting shorter, albeit very slowly. I hate waking up at 4:30 and staying awake because the damn sun is already coming up. That's the downside of falling asleep more easily because I get more sunshine by not living in a basement. Anyway, none of these events will beat Weird Al, but they don't need to.

I saw that quote on Facebook this week, attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. My response, which took me no time to think about at all, was that butterflies don't infest people's homes, get in their food, or spread diseases. I withheld my further analysis that Nietzsche was a moron and I could scratch looking into his philosophical contributions off my bucket list. In preparing for this post, however, I wasn't very surprised to learn that this quote doesn't come from the famous 19th-century philosopher at all, but rather from some random guy on Twitter in 2012. Classic internet.

The thing is, this guy could have made a valid point if he'd picked an ugly bug that wasn't a cockroach. When I see an earwig in my living space, I kill it on the spot with a feeling of revulsion. When I see a spider, I catch it and put it outside. When I see a box elder bug, I ignore it. The latter, admittedly, hasn't happened since I lived in Logan, where they were so plentiful that I didn't care if they crawled on me, like invasive Japanese ladybugs when I lived in New York. I'll freely admit to being a bug racist. But cockroaches are an extra level of awful, and my own experience with them wasn't even that bad. The most I ever killed in a day was nine. I've heard about people killing hundreds in an hour. A friend told me about living in a place where the floor went from black to white when he turned the light on, and having them swarm his face and stuff. If I'm ever in a situation like that, rest assured that I'll burn the place down with myself inside.

Mind you, I'm talking about my living space. I typically go out of my way not to kill bugs outside, no matter how ugly they are. I've seen several June bugs outside my apartment complex, and I've seen several that have obviously been crushed to death on purpose, and I don't like that. If one ever gets in my apartment, I'll freak the hell out, but until then, I say live and let live. Conversely, if I see ants in here, I'll kill them even though I don't find them particularly ugly because they cause some of the same issues as cockroaches. I try to take a non-malicious approach regardless. Cockroaches are a morally neutral part of nature that evolved to do what they do, and they have as much right to exist as I do - but I'm a part of nature too, and I'm bigger than they are, and I don't want them here. I felt a little bad about them slowly dying of thirst inside my Roach Motels, but that's life.

Thanks to the angels at the Roach Motel company, I haven't seen a live cockroach in months, but I realized that they'd traumatized me when I had a nightmare about them this week - possibly because I read that quote, though I've already forgotten which happened first. I was in a train car talking to some people about stuff, and I asked them to kill the cockroach that flew in. I had some awareness that this was a dream, and I debated whether I should wake up to make sure that, by some unfortunate coincidence, a flying cockroach hadn't actually gotten into my apartment to start a new infestation. I recognized that I was being paranoid, but in the end, I couldn't rest easy until I knew for sure, so I did wake up. What fun.

Today, for the second time, a little brown shield beetle got through my supposedly sealed window. These guys don't look like either of the species of cockroaches I've had, but they're close enough to make me uneasy. The first time, I caught it in a cup, took a picture, and asked Gemini if it was a cockroach. This time, I tried to do the same thing because I'd forgotten exactly what the first one looked like. However, this one was less docile. The first one stayed in the cup without me even having to cover it, and I didn't even realize it could fly until Gemini told me, after I'd carried it outside and shaken it out onto a bush. This one escaped while I was trying to take a picture. Right next to my bed, too. Fortunately, after I got back from the Pride parade, I found it on the frame of the balcony door, and I got a picture and shooed it outside before Gemini reassured me that I hadn't just made a terrible mistake by not killing a cockroach when I had the chance.

Sorry if this isn't interesting. I thought maybe I'd write about Jeff Strong's new book, Torn, that's meant to help LDS Church members understand how many people have left and the real reasons why, or the Bricks and Minifigs / American Fork Police Department scandal that I finally learned about because approximately eight million YouTube channels are covering it, or Pete Kegsbreath's new military chaplaincy classification chart that doesn't classify the LDS Church as a Christian denomination because news flash, Mormons, you're not welcome in the Christian Nationalist club no matter how much you help them take trans people's rights away. I didn't feel motivated enough to force myself to write about those things. What got my fingers moving? Cockroaches. Freaking cockroaches. Well, specifically the fact that someone was ignorant enough to think that crushing cockroaches but not butterflies is solely a matter of aesthetic criteria. I'm glad that someone wasn't Nietzsche. Maybe I'll read some of his stuff someday after all.

And cockroaches still deserve to live more than ICE agents do.

I recently discovered a Smith's grocery store the same distance from my apartment as the other two Smith's grocery stores I've been to, but I can get there 20% faster because it's in a quieter part of town and most of the intersections between here and there don't have traffic lights. The other evening, I was leaving the store with four grocery bags, and an old homeless man on a bike with a trailer full of stuff called out to me as I passed him. I managed to hear him over my headphones. He was like, "That looks like a heavy load." I was like, "Yeah. It's fine, I need the exercise," which is true, and I kept walking before he could make me feel guilty for having no cash to give him, although frankly, homeless people usually ask me for a cigarette or a light instead. He kept talking, so I paused my music because my heart is too big. He asked how far I had to go. I had a mile and a half to go, but I rounded down to a mile so it wouldn't sound like a big deal, but it wasn't. No dice. He wanted me to hang my bags from his trailer so he could help me carry them. He promised not to ride off with them. I wasn't worried about that, since I could have caught him and kicked his ass pretty easily, but I just wanted to be left alone with my music. I agreed to let him help me because my heart is too big.

He was slow and cautious, always maneuvering and looking back to make sure my bags didn't scrape against signs or anything. Spoiler alert, letting him help took over twice as long as carrying the bags myself. But I didn't get impatient because I knew I was doing an important thing. He told me right off about how much he loves to help people and how he needs to be better about letting people help him because he deprives them of happiness when he doesn't. He told me all about his daughters and his adventure pretending to be his friend's lawyer and getting yelled at by a judge. He said he'd been homeless for eight years, since his wife divorced him. He said the worst parts about being homeless are how the cops treat you and how citizens treat you. He said being homeless is awful, and he wouldn't wish it on his worst enemy, but it's interesting. He said he was finally motivated to try to get into housing because his best friend had made him realize how many loved ones he'd dragged down with him. He asked if I'd ever been homeless. I said no, and didn't mention that I would have been multiple times if not for other people's generosity because I thought that might make him feel bad about not being the recipient of such generosity. He said most people don't realize they're only two or three paychecks away from homelessness. I, for one, am acutely and frequently aware of that. But yeah, most people in this country are still under the delusion that they can become rich if they work hard.

By the time we got to my place, I felt very bad for telling him it was a mile. I offered him a box of crackers from my groceries because how could I not, but he just wanted something cold to drink. I got him some strawberry lemonade from my fridge. Before we parted ways, he talked about God, said he'd let his daughters make their own religious decisions, and now one of them is LDS, one is a born-again Christian, one is agnostic, and one is atheist. I gathered that he was an agnostic, too. I mentioned that I don't have the same beliefs about God as most people here, but I didn't get a chance to explain the "We're all part of God" thing. Anyway, I don't know how to shape this into an engaging story, and I don't mean to be like "Look, I'm so generous" or "Hey guys, I learned that homeless people are people," but this was an impactful experience for me, so I wanted to write about it. I'm glad I was open to it. I won't apologize for leading a solitary existence or having my music on most of the time (though I won't for a few days, since my phone broke this morning), but in this instance, giving this man my time and letting him help me was the right thing to do. His name was Kevin. I hope he gets into housing and has a great rest of his life. I'm not optimistic, given that the Republican platform is basically "Fuck the poor" and they're driving us into a massive recession, if not a second Great Depression, but... well, there's no but. I'm not optimistic. At least he has a positive attitude and a beautiful heart.

​If you want a masterclass in what actually makes the United States great, you didn't need to look any further than Washington Square last weekend. The Living Traditions Festival took over Salt Lake City for three days, and while it was a phenomenal party on the surface, underneath the surface, it felt like something much more radical. That wasn't the organizers' intention when they started it forty years ago, but it's the current reality.
​
In a political climate where a loud, panicked contingent is trying to engineer a monochrome, white Christian ethnostate, Living Traditions felt like a giant, vibrant middle finger to that entire ideology. What we are witnessing across the US right now is the extinction burst of racists and xenophobes who are terrified of becoming a minority and being treated the way they treat minorities.

Frankly, those people must lead miserable, restricted lives. Imagine moving through the world genuinely believing that other cultures are inherently inferior, or at a minimum, that they should be confined to their countries of origin. To lock yourself out of the world's wealth like that is a self-inflicted punishment. Getting to openly dive into, celebrate, and enjoy these cultures brings a level of pure human joy that those driven by fear will simply never experience.

I leaned into that joy entirely, clocking in for all 22 hours of the festival across its three-day run. With live music and dance performances running concurrently across three different stages, it was physically impossible to catch everything. I had to accept that FOMO, surrender to the rhythm of the weekend, and just do my best to take in what I could. (I also had to accept that overpriced food was just part of the experience, like at any event. At least it was diverse food.)

The magic of that setup hit me hardest when I watched a powerful Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba performance, followed immediately by a Celtic music set. Standing there, it clicked: each of these cultures, as beautiful as they are, is incomplete on its own. My own life would be empty if I were restricted to only Bomba or only Celtic melodies. I'm glad I live in an age with easy access to both.

Cultures aren't meant to exist in sterile isolation; they are meant to collide, interweave, and enrich one another. That is the true superpower of the era we live in, and Living Traditions was proof that despite the loudest voices of division, diversity isn't just our reality — it's our greatest joy. Even within acts, we could see this mixing. Many of the children from the Hawaiian dance school were white. The Japanese taiko drumming couple were white and Latino (but they learned from a Japanese teacher). The Celtic group's singer was black.

Also, despite Mormonism's attempts to make itself the center of the universe, all of these cultures have done just fine without it.