If you don't accept that humans are a product of evolution and still subject to natural selection, then I don't know how you make sense of the fact that teenagers are daring each other to eat laundry detergent. If I'd ever had a shred of faith in humanity, I might be surprised that I'm putting those words in a sentance in that order, but I hadn't and I'm not. Some people see this as a problem. I don't. But in an effort to be more compassionate, I've tried to think of how I would feel if my own teenager died from eating laundry detergent.

Me: *sobs uncontrollably*
Bystander: I know, it's always hard to lose a loved one...
Me: No, I'm crying because my genetic material created something that stupid.

Actually, this is implausible because, like I said. my teenager would most likely be adopted. Anyway, on to the main portion of our program. How good it feels to be returning to school nearly three years after I was supposed to graduate. How good it feels to still see some familiar faces from a year and a half ago or more. The man whom I may have to kill if he turns out to be a better writer than me. The woman who always looks like she's wincing from a terrible pun. The man whom I never spoke with in the previous class we were in together but who now wants to be best friends. The woman who - wait, is that her, or is it a sister or something? She looks slightly different... I can't tell... The man with long, silky, flawless, sexuality-confusing hair. And so on and so forth. Here is an edge-of-your-seat-thrilling rundown of the classes I'm taking this semester. I'm already far busier than any semester before and it looks like homework is going to be my primary hobby six days a week for the next four months. I attracted a few stares in the bookstore as I shuffled to the register with my literally twenty books.

Bookstore Worker: Do you need help finding anything?
Me (out loud): No thank you.
Me (not out loud): I know how the alphabet works, thanks.

And also, every class requires participation as part of the grade.

So I've been proactive in each class at contributing something as soon as I can so I can relax, and most of my comments end up being kind of banal and useless and everyone probably thinks I'm a simpleton.

Me: It reminds me of "Shrek" because he said ogres are like onions and they have layers...
Professor: Ha, so you're saying [intellectual articulate stuff].
​Me: Yeah.

That's it, the class is just called "Shakespeare". It's a 4000 level class and about five minutes into it I was thinking, Uh, you do realize I have other classes, right? I had four days to read "The Taming of the Shrew", but I misunderstood and read it in two days, which was fine because I had no shortage of other homework. I'm not sure what to think of it. It's so misogynistic it makes Donald Drumpf look like Gloria Steinem, but it's also a thousand times more intelligently written than his Tweets. Obviously our female professor feels that it has some redeeming value somehow. We discussed at length the various mental gymnastics that can be employed to make Petruchio seem like less of a monster. I don't understand his methodology anyway. Being deprived of sleep doesn't make me more compliant, it makes me more homicidal. That's hyperbole. Mostly. I can't wait to read other, less repugnant Shakespeare plays because I actually quite enjoy him and wish people were still that smart.

Just another English student in the music building for a science class, that's me. I started out in the sciences. I majored in Wildlife Science for a few years and that's how I took a bunch of biology classes, came out of the closet as an evolutionist and gained the expertise to refute every creationist I've ever argued with on the internet. Even though I ultimately decided that I don't love science and would rather just stare at its butt as it walks by, I have no regrets about spending that time in that area. And I certainly never imagined that I would come back to it so near the end. This class meets some requirement or other. It's not entirely a science class, but wants to equip us to make science accessible to normal people through art, so obviously that's where the connection comes in. I definitely want to use art to convince people to agree with me on science, religion, politics, and which Star Wars movie is the best (but actually we all know what that is already).

We watched an hour and a half National Geographic documentary called "The Story of Earth". I was riveted. I knew many of these facts, of course, and had read a ton about dinosaurs, but to see the whole thing animated from start to finish was a new and enrapturing experience. The British narrator's pronunciations were occasionally a bit jarring, though. In his mouth algea was "AL-gee" and methane was "MEE-thane". I have to wonder, in a class like this, how many students are Mormons and how many of those Mormons are resisting what they're hearing because they don't believe in evolution. And I wonder how many are conservatives and how many of those conservatives are resisting what they're hearing because they don't believe in climate change. I didn't believe in either of those things when I took my first college biology class but I put aside my biases and listened to the material anyway and here I am now.

American culture is obviously difficult to define because, contrary to what the current admistration obviously believes, it's a melting pot that incorporates every other culture in the world. Yet at the same time, it's distinctive enough to be recognized as it in turn forces itself onto every other culture in the world. I've given some thought in the past to how I would define uniquely American culture: spirit of free enterprise, gun fetish, fast food, pornography, rap music, country music, cowboys, getting offended, lawsuits, Hollywood, leg-humping obsession with skin color, polarized mud-slinging politics, creationism, separation of church and state. Looks like I get to find out how close to the mark I was. I'm the least concerned about this class because it's only a 2000 level and the professor's name is Christopher so he's already biased in my favor. One day he showed us three songs and asked us to brainstorm what they say about American culture.

We seemed to reach a consensus that John Mellencamp had a bit of a White Savior complex and played into stereotypes a little too much, but his heart was in the right place, and this was back in the unenlightened days of 2007 before we'd ever had a black president and so on.

I actually love this song for both the melody and the nostalgia of hanging out with Cece, but I never paid much attention to the lyrics. Even now if you put a gun to my head all I could recite with total confidence is "You've got a fast car". So it turns out the lyrics tell a depressing story about being unable to achieve the American dream.

Kendrick Lamar speaks to my tortured soul. He seems to have some similar gripes to Tracy Chapman, but goes about expressing them in an altogether different way, focusing on raw emotion over storyline, arguably making his version more easily identified with by a broader range of people.

The professor asked us each to suggest a song we like that says something or other about American culture, to be sprinkled in throughout the rest of the semester. And that was a no-brainer if I ever heard one. 

Unsurprisingly, we've already talked about race issues every day. I want to apologize again for previously being ignorant of the depth of racism that still exists in this country, and again add the disclaimer that if a certain side of the political spectrum hadn't constantly exaggerated it and tried to weaponize it to shut down legitimate discourse I would have taken it seriously much sooner. The professor believes in free speech and thinks people should be able to air their views, no matter how repugnant, as long as everyone else then has the right to tell them their views are crap. I agree. We should give even the Nazis and white supremacists a platform, as long as it comes with a rope and a long drop.

I thought this would be like nineteenth century stuff, but we're going way, way back farther than that. We're reading contemporary writings about the Spanish conquistadors, and we're reading about the horrible abuses and genocide they dished out to the Native Americans, and it's disturbing and disgusting and depressing and gives me an idea for a novel. The best part, really the only part I liked, was when some Native Americans captured some Spaniards and held them down and poured melted gold down their throats and were like "You want gold? Here's your gold, Christians! Enjoy!" They weren't really Christians, of course, not by a long shot. Oh, and also my former co-worker Smile Girl is in this class. I call her that inside my head because she smiles at nothing and everything. I couldn't help wondering, for example, whether the muscles in her face were stuck or she just really got a thrill out of the soap dispenser. She must have missed the memo that she doesn't owe anyone a smile.

On the first day the professor was like, "I don't know what's in the stories I'm making you read and I'm not going to censor what you write. There might be rape scenes, convenience store robberies, '----' every other word... Consider that your trigger warning for the whole semester." But that was essentially the same trigger warning I got in Fiction Writing and Poetry Writing and Creative Non-Fiction Writing, each of which failed to deliver anything more scandalous than the average high school lunch period, so I wasn't too fazed. And it actually occurs to me just now that I became art of the reason those warnings were given. It actually occurs to me just now that my story about a lady who goes around cutting off people's hands and wearing them on her head could have been unsettling for some readers. My other stories and poems weren't all sunshine and lemondrops either. I guess I've been desensitized to a lot of things. I don't know how else to not be thoroughly miserable every waking moment on this planet.

Student: This part where the funny sidekick animal says 'He just needs an axe to the face' is kind of dark.
​Me: Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way.

We talk about all kinds of literary techniques - the aforementioned onion thing, for example, and stuff like facades and icebergs where people don't say what they mean or prove themselves to be unreliable narrators when you read between the lines. Putting this into practice may prove challenging for an Aspie. The closest I've come to understanding real people in this regard is to just assume they're lying most of the time. One student gave Drumpf's tweets as an example of facade. When he calls himself a "stable genius", you kind of get the opposite impression. "I'm not making a political statement, I just find it fascinating," he said. No, I get it. Drumpf's lack of character, morals or intelligence is hardly a political issue. Plot twist: Drumpf really is the greatest genius the world has ever known and the rest of us just aren't smart enough to see it. Getting back on topic...

This is of course the most exciting class because it relates most directly to what I want to do with my life. And, uncoincidentally, it's also the class that most makes me suddenly feel like not such a great writer after all. So it looks like it's going to be awesome and hellish at the same time. Which will probably also describe the whole semester.

Okay, I'll give the blathering on about Star Wars a rest. A review of "The Last Jedi" will probably be forthcoming in a few weeks. I'll just say for now that I liked it much better the second time.

Visiting my family in Indiana required getting up at 6 am on Saturday morning. So like most people would do, I set an alarm. But additionally, my brain does this really helpful thing where it likes to wake me up at least an hour before my alarm goes off. And it did that. So after a bit of unpleasant half-sleeping delirium I came to my senses, such as they are, enough to figure that I should check how much time I had left. And the clock said... wait for it... 12:46. So I had probably been asleep for like two minutes. I said to my brain, I said, "Are you ----------------------------------- kidding me??"

I got back to sleep and, sure enough, woke up again. I checked again. Maybe it was almost time. Or maybe it was 2:59. It was 2:59.

"I hate being me," I told God. That was an overstatement, of course, but it was how I felt at the moment.

The third time, I wasn't optimistic, but it was 5:49 and that somehow came as a relief even though I felt like crap. I just wanted to put on a blindfold like Kanan Jarrus and never open my eyes again. How was it possible to be so hungry and so needing to throw up at the same time? Ironically, I felt worse than I did a week later, yesterday, when I went to bed at 10, fell asleep sometime after 1:30, and was woken up at 5:24, aka 3:24 MST. Somehow I got so hot while being unable to sleep that twice I went outside in my underwear and stood with my bare feet in the snow and it felt like a cool spring day. But I digress.

I had to get up so early, in large part, so I could arrive at the airport two hours before my flight to make sure I would have plenty of time to get through security even though it's never taken more than five minutes. But this time it did. This time it took an extra ten minutes. When my laptop didn't come out of the scanner with the rest of my stuff, I knew something was up. When the TSA guy carried it over to another station and asked "Whose laptop is this?" I knew something was up. When he gestured me over to him with a couple fingers and pointed to the external hard drive enclosure duct taped to the top of it and asked "What's that?" I knew something was up. He said that for future reference it looks suspicious to have something taped to a laptop in an airport and their explosives expert would have to look at it. That was fine with me, as I had nothing to hide, but I started to get a little worried that they would confiscate it anyway like they did my toothpaste one time, and then they may as well just shoot me too because it has my tens of thousands of songs that took years to accumulate.

It was nice of the people at both airports to let me through with my expired ID. There was an officer at one of them who looked like Will Smith. I wanted to get a picture of him, but I might have gotten in trouble. I traveled all day, had the usual delays, and got to Indiana around 9 pm EST. It was another hour to the house and then I was ready for bed. And right as I got out of the car I remembered the trains that pass like twenty feet from my parents' house several times a day and night and always blow their horns. I used to like trains. On a more positive note, the next morning it was once again nice to attend a congregation not completely full of white people. Don't get me wrong, most of my best friends are white, but it just gets stifling when that's all I'm ever surrounded by, you know? Because it was Christmas Eve, somebody thought it would be a good idea to sing like eight hymns. I opted out of all the extra ones because I was tired. The black Baptist convert behind us complained that we had ruined the tunes, and she wasn't wrong.

So, the fifty degrees of winter thing the previous and only time I'd visited Indiana turned out to be a fluke. It was very cold. One day I walked a couple miles from the house and on the return trip my fingers felt like they had been hacked off. I have gloves, I just don't know where they are. But it was sunny! I was asked to post some pictures and bring the sunshine back to Utah! So here are some pictures and I got a pocketful of sunshine which, as anyone in Logan can attest, is being put to good use. It wasn't too terribly cold some days, but one day I went for a walk and my fingers felt like they'd been hacked off. I have gloves somewhere, I just don't know where they are. I hope I got enough pictures to satisfy the person who requested pictures.

Trains that were very hard to photograph through the trees

As Douglas Adams famously wrote in "Last Chance to See", here be chickens

​

My parents have the best kind of neighbors

A church we don't go to

Bustling city stuff

​​My scary friend Mackenzie is starting to sound even more like a mob boss

​I knew what she meant the first time, of course, but I like messing with her. My advice to her and anyone else hiring someone to take me out is make sure you're not talking to an undercover cop by mistake. I saw that on TV once. It was real, filmed with a hidden camera in the cop's car, and this woman was hiring him to shoot her husband and he was playing Satan and trying to goad her into being more evil. He was like, "You know, sometimes when I shoot people, it takes them a long time to die and they suffer a lot. Does that bother you?" And she was like, "I don't care, I don't care, I just want him gone. Ohhh, I'm gonna sleep good tonight." You can spot undercover cops because they never actually drink the beer. Wait, wrong setting. You're on your own then.

My parents have a few books

I took the time to read some of them and record my thoughts.

"Lost Race of Mars" by Robert Silverberg. Written in 1960, set in the distant future of 2017, where the colonists on Mars still use film cameras and paper mail. I'd trade digital cameras and email for a colony on Mars. We haven't even put a person on Mars, which is pathetic and inexcusable. We should have done it decades ago. Would we even be able to get emails on Mars? Could they set up the internet infrastructure between here and there? But hey, at least we have fidget spinners, amiright? 

"Peanuts Classics" by Charles Schultz. This one is mine. I don't remember it having a broken binding and a brown stain all the way through. Let's see... oh, I know all these comics by heart even though I haven't read them in who knows how long. I read them so many times and yet I never really understood how great some of them are.

"From First Date to Chosen Hate" by Brenton G. Yorgason. Oh, "Mate". Right, I always read that wrong the first time. It's not the best font. Well, maybe I ought to read this famous book. Plot twist: it's for Australians wanting to escape the matezone. "Hooley dooley! So you've come the raw prawn with another true blue Sheila and she's dobbed she just wants to be mates? Do you just cop it sweet and hope she'll be apples, or bugger that for a joke? Fair suck o' the sav!" etc. 1977? Then it should be good for a few laughs. I'm sure it's very... dated. Hum de dum. Oh, so dating sucked even before millennials ruined it? So much for my... romanticizing the past. Creative date ideas - skip! Satan's deceptions - skip! Getting engaged - skip! Oh, look, it's available on archive.org and I just wasted my time reading the hard copy instead of something else! Well, it was very dated but it did have some good stuff. I recommend modern readers to supplement it with  "Modern Romance" by Aziz Ansari and "Animal Behavior" by John Alcock.

"Happy Valley Patrol" by John "Blitz" Krieg, pseudonym for Robert Kirby. This book has seen better days. The binding is all but gone and at least a quarter of the pages are not connected to anything. I didn't do it, though I have read it many times. It's a collection of the eponymous newspaper column about Kirby's time as a police officer in Utah, and I love it because it makes fun of two things that I love making fun of: the human race and Provo. And it's just as hilarious this time around.

​I also read through all my Tintin books that my sister is keeping safely for safekeeping. I hadn't read them since before I started college, and now I get more of the jokes and references. Hergé truly was a rare breed of genius, which would explain why most Americans don't appreciate him. If you haven't read Tintin, do so; you won't be sorry unless you have no taste. If you want to be thorough you can start from the actual beginning with the mediocre "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" and the racist "Tintin in the Congo", but it's probably better to just start with the sanctioned volumes and come back to those for thoroughness after you're hooked.

A noble crusader against injustice has brought to light that in the last five years, twenty Holocaust victims were posthumously baptized by various Mormons in violation of LDS Church policy, sparking another round of complaints about baptizing dead people without consent. One should always obtain a dead person's consent before performing an ordinance that will either unlock their path to salvation or have no affect on them whatsoever. And it is, of course, incredibly selfish and thoughtless for Mormons to spend time baptizing people who will never be on the membership records, pay tithing, or help a church ball team. How would we feel if someone did it to us? I, for one, would be outraged if I were dead and a Muslim or a Hindu or a Rastafarian did something they thought would help me get into heaven. In fact, there's a website called "All Dead Mormons Are Now Gay" which purports to make that happen, and you can guess how much that upsets me by how many times in my life I've mentioned it. (This is the first time in my life I've mentioned it.) Why doesn't every religion just do this for everyone, and then we'll all have all our bases covered?

Several Jewish leaders take this practice personally because it reminds them of the long history of Jews being forced to convert to Christianity or die. That's understandable (even though, as people keep pretending to forget, Mormon teachings state that dead people are free to accept or reject the ordinance). The LDS Church is under no legal obligation to stop the baptizing of Holocaust victims, but does so as a gesture of good will. Most of the people feigning self-righteous indignation over the very few who slipped through the system are atheists who believe that Holocaust victims ceased to exist as soon as they were murdered. That in their lives, millions of lives, the Nazis permanently and irrevocably won. And these complaints about baptizing dead people without consent ring just a little hollow coming from them. And do they care one iota about Jewish religion or culture at any other time? A random teeny little hunch tells me probably not. Some people need to grow up.

The world has survived year one of Drumpf's presidency. True, he didn't accomplish much worthwhile, and he consistently refused to behave in an intelligent or dignified manner befitting a nation's leader (which comes as a surprise to no one), but he hasn't started a nuclear war ​yet despite his best efforts so I say we should count our blessings. I look forward to blogging for another year, and striving to please my loyal fans, unless of course I unexpectedly die and move beyond this vale of tears, which would be even better. I suppose it's also possible that Daesh will cut off my hands. That would really suck. I will surely face many challenges in this coming year, and just as surely God will bring me through them as He always has in the past, as undeserving as I am. I don't stress nearly as much about them now. So there's that.

There aren't a lot of New Year's songs. That means there also aren't a lot of good ones. Enter George Harrison's "Ding Dong", which ought to be a lot more famous than it is, and might become a tradition with me since this is the second time I've shared it.

My search engine optimization spree several months ago (shout-out to Mark Bell for the advice) appears to have finally paid off, as I am finally satisfied with the page views I'm getting. Less than a year ago I struggled to consistently break 100 and now I'm always somewhere between 300 and 2000. Sometimes I see that sometimes people who Google reasons to support the war on drugs find my page of sarcastic reasons to support the war on drugs. And sometimes people find my site, not sure specifically which page, by searching for black/African porn. If I could figure out why and replicate it on purpose, I could be getting millions of hits a day. And my review of "David and the Magic Pearl" has spiked in popularity for some reason. To my surprise, "In Defense of Pedophiles" still hasn't garnered much attention. That disappoints me because I had hoped it would be controversial enough to trick people into learning about an important topic. My little map at the bottom of the site, which is supposed to track all visitor locations but misses most of them because cookies or whatever, broke 3000 locations last month and that was exciting.

I read this article about this documentary by an Indian featuring several other Indians claiming that "The Simpsons" character Dr. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is racist. And I don't want that to be right, because I consider "The Simpsons" to be one of the best and most clever shows ever made, but I'm forced to concede that it probably is. I'm in no position to say it's not racist when I'm not on the receiving end of it. I'll just say this, that in my particular case, I don't feel that watching Apu had any detrimental effect on how I perceive Indians or their culture. On the contrary, it seemed to me that Apu was one of the smarter people in a world of mostly doofuses. In the episode "Much Apu About Nothing", for example, we have this exchange from his test to gain American citizenship:

Examiner: All right, here's your last question. What was the cause of the Civil War?
Apu: Actually, there were numerous causes. Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter...
Examiner: Wait, wait... just say slavery.
Apu: Slavery it is, sir.

Prior to reading this article I didn't realize that Apu was voiced by a white guy. That certainly factors in. I think that in an world, we could all poke lighthearted fun at each other's accents and cultures and religions without being hurtful, as we do to a limited extent now. For example, in "Prisencolinensinainciusol", Italian Adriano Celentano sang a bunch of gibberish words that sound like English in a fake American accent. It wasn't controversial, I presume, because a. both groups are predominantly white European in makeup and b. Americans have never been oppressed by Italians, so no one would worry that this imitation was symptomatic of any deep-rooted prejudice. Imitating an Indian accent can have different connotations of the skin color difference and because Indians were oppressed by British for a long time. (It looks weird to not write "the British", but I'm not talking about all British people. How come I don't have to write "the Indians" but I have to write "the British"? That's stupid.)

It's not going to happen, but if humans ever got to the point of eradicating true prejudice altogether and all such teasing became acceptable, that would be great. We could eliminate all teasing instead, but where's the fun in that? I tease my friends, I tease my favorite franchises, I tease my own religion and its culture and usually find it hilarious when others do so as well. But we're not at that point with the human race, so yes, it does sadly appear to me that Apu is more or less racist, though like I said my opinion doesn't really matter.

I read this other article about how Hollywood drastically underrepresents and marginalizes women and non-white people. I won't call them "minorities" because that's increasingly an inaccurate term. Pretty soon white people will be the minority in the US, and since I'm not a Nazi I don't have a problem with that. Naturally, the asinine comments on the article by white and/or male people trying to rationalize why this isn't a problem were depressing to read. As much as I hate sounding like an SJW, defending this status quo is privilege at its finest. But, you know, it's ridiculous for these hoity-toity scientists to suggest that sexualizing women in the media causes women to have self-esteem problems, because men get sexualized too. Like all those muscular superhero guys. That's definitely the same thing, and since everyone knows men and women are exactly the same it's inconceivable that they could be affected differently. I wish I were making this idiocy up.

Star Wars, in particular, has made great strides in this area, leading some children to gripe that even Han Solo will be a woman in his upcoming solo film. I hope that in a future day there will be no need for conscious attempts to put more diversity in movies, because it will just be happening automatically. But Disney, the Imperial ranks are exactly the wrong place for more female representation. Part of their shtick is that with very few exceptions they don't like women or aliens. Maybe the First Order is different.

​I would like to point out that I made both the protagonists in my manuscript female over seven years ago. I did this because I discovered that women, aliens, robots, and fantasy creatures were the only characters I could write with any feeling of investment and authenticity. And I never intended this as a huge feminist statement or anything, though the working title "Space Girls" may suggest otherwise. I knew there was a need for it after someone heard about them and expressed incredulity that they weren't lesbians. At one point I gender-swapped some of the characters to have more female representation, and I suppose that was a feminist statement. But most of the Earthling characters are, at least in my mind, white, and that's because I grew up surrounded by mostly white people and I'm still surrounded by mostly white people, so it was a subconscious thing and when the movie version is underway I'll make sure casting is open to people of all races.

Speaking of my manuscript, here's the latest feedback from a test reader:

Send a message like this to someone and make their day. They probably won't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure it will make their day.

Moving on to even more cheery and uplifting things. I'm grateful to know that this attitude exists, and that some of my "friends" share it, because I wasn't afraid enough of women already and this really helps with that. (I'm being sarcastic.)

In fairness, her remarks have been taken out of context. She goes on to explain "that is a price I am absolutely willing to pay". The fact that she herself isn't paying jack should hardly detract from the sincerity of these words. And of course, "[i]t's a microscopic risk in comparison to the issue at hand", which should be a source of great comfort to all the men who have lost their jobs and reputations and been incarcerated on rape convictions. It's not that you don't matter, guys, it's just that you don't matter. Because microscopic. But if you're lucky you live in a state that, after your innocence is discovered, will reimburse you less than minimum wage for the years of your life that they stole. And it really bothers me that Emily Lindin looks like Felicity Jones in this picture. I don't want the respect I hold for Felicity Jones to be tainted by mental association with this other person.

Moving on again, don't be this guy. I haven't gotten so many likes on a comment in a while.

Here's Sarah Brightman again already to ring in the Christmas season. This version of this song is the sort of thing that, given the choice, I would listen to on my deathbed while happily drifting out of consciousness surrounded by my loving and beautiful dogs. Beautiful song + beautiful voice = aural perfection.

Before I begin, of course, along with everyone else I express my condolences, useless though they are, for the latest mass shooting in the only country in the world where mass shootings are a regular occurrence. I am grateful that as usual liberals and conservatives alike were willing to wait a few minutes, out of respect for the dead, before attempting to twist the facts of the event to further their agenda. ​Not wishing to detract from the spirit of my intended topic, I shall forebear from saying anything more on that for now.

Last weekend was that time of year again, the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where I, being the imbecile that anyone who knows me can tell you I am, go to get brainwashed again. This time around I was able to watch it with my beautiful wife, Felicity, who is not yet a member. Praying for her. And it was possibly the best conference I've ever been to, because I did what I was supposed to and came with a question in mind, a question that I've pondered and prayed and fasted and sought advice on for months. And the heavens opened in an incredible way. I also felt inspired and committed to be a better person. I want to be more humble. I want to be more patient. I want to be kinder to my many enemies. I want to stop robbing liquor stores, selling crack, and running over schoolkids in my car. (Bonus points if you get the reference.) But let's be honest, I probably won't.

Between sessions I got into some arguments on Facebook. Filled with a love for my Savior, I tried really, really hard not to insult anyone directly, but alas, the flesh is weak and I failed to avoid dripping with sarcasm. For every intelligent person I can respectfully disagree with, there are a hundred, shall we say, less intelligent people whose confidence is inversely proportional to said intelligence. Whenever I see a comment on an LDS topic that consists solely of the word "CULT!!", I stare and marvel and wonder how long it took this genius to come up with that on his own. One of them deigned to explain his superior logic: "It's a cult, and cults are bad. It should be banned." Yeah, I was just reading the other day about how this cult is installing water filters in scores of Indian villages to save them from fluoride poisoning. Screw this filthy rotten cult. Also, one particularly insightful free thinker blocked me after I called him out for resorting to ad hominem attacks after I refuted his assertion that an "entire generation" is leaving the LDS Church. He really showed me the error of my ways, you bet.

​Shut up, Dr. Horrible. Also, to the minions of Satan I saw mocking Elder Robert D. Hales and celebrating his death - I feel sorry for you, truly. Take a good long look in the mirror, if you dare. Following is a list of my favorite talks, including of course the ones that I found most elucidating.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf - A Yearning for Home
The Saturday morning session started off strong with the second most charismatic speaker available (sorry, but Elder Costa has him beat), and he in turn started off strong by talking about animals. I love animals. I hope I prove worthy to meet my dog again someday. My revelation began already with this talk my ears pricked and my heart warmed at some of his words that could be applied out of context to my own more personalized yearning. "Those who heed the inner call and seek God," President Uchtdorf said, "those who pray, believe, and walk the path the Savior has prepared - even if they stumble along the path at times - receive the consoling assurance that 'all things shall work together for [their] good.'" After this talk I felt inspired to keep doing what I'm already doing - trusting God as I pray for help every day, one step at a time, without seeing the outcome yet.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks - The Plan and the Proclamation
I must admit I have no particular strong feelings on the doctrines espoused in his talk and have struggled with some of them at times (see this essay, for example). I accept them because they're part of the package, and selectively rejecting doctrines in a church like this is logically untenable. But I enjoyed this talk because I love a good controversy, and I knew that by repeating the same things church leaders have been saying for many years, Elder Oaks would generate one. I wasn't disappointed. By taking such unpopular stances and holding firm to them in the face of backlash, setting aside the question of whether they're even correct, Elder Oaks and other General Authorities prove themselves to be men of courage and integrity - certainly more so than most of their critics who require very little to express the rage at them from behind electronic screens. However, unlike many members, I won't pretend to be unaware of why many people find these teachings legitimately painful. But that doesn't make them untrue. There are some things I know to be true that I find very painful myself. Oh, do I ever.

*THAN. Sheesh.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland - Be Ye Therefore Perfect - Eventually
One billion dollars. One. Billion. Dollars. It was just very impactful to me when put in those terms.
​
Elder Ronald A. Rasband - By Divine Design
This topic was unique enough to keep my attention even if it hadn't been another confirmation of my ponderings on my own dilemma. I have felt that certain individuals are in my life for a reason, and that I need to figure out what it is. I wish God would just tell me what it is. I think I know what it is, but what if I'm wrong? At least this talk tells me I'm on the right track. "Through the experience of my own life’s journey, I know that the Lord will move us on that seeming chessboard to do His work. What may appear to be a random chance is, in fact, overseen by a loving Father in Heaven, who can number the hairs of every head." I know this does not mean, as many think, that God micromanages every detail of everything that ever happens. Rather, he allows events to play out and people to exercise their free will, and foresees that and weaves it into His plan and carries out His purposes one way or another, because come on, He's not so rigid and inflexible that His plan will be ruined if you go left instead of right one day.

President Russel M. Nelson - The Book of Mormon: What Would Your Life Be Like Without it?
I have known the Book of Mormon was true for as long as I've read it. It's just been perfectly obvious to me. I never bothered to pray and ask God if it was true. Then I figured that if I was going to go on a mission and tell people to ask God if it was true, I should have done the same thing, so I tried it - but I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to ask "with full purpose of heart, with real intent" because it seemed pointless to ask a question I already knew the answer to. While I have had many doubts at various times about other doctrines, policies, or events, I could never dismiss the Book of Mormon without lying to myself. Of course this caused quite a bit of cognitive dissonance before everything was resolved. Having said that, am I phenomenal at actually studying it? No. After this talk I hope I will be able to do better, and I am reassured that if I do I will be able to receive more guidance in my aspiration.

President Henry B. Eyring - The Lord Leads His Church
Several weeks ago I met with my bishop for a blessing regarding my issue, and afterward, although he said he couldn't promise what the outcome would be, within the space of a few minutes he told me not once, not twice, but thrice not to give up on it. He said discouragement comes from the devil. I accepted this somewhat easily because it was what I wanted to hear anyway. But I felt that it was a big leap of faith for me. I study a lot of church history and am aware of several of the mistakes that church leaders have made. If even prophets are fallible, I thought, how much more so is a bishop? How can I fully trust him? I made the leap of faith and told God I was making a leap of faith and hoped it would be validated. It was in this talk, where President Eyring explained that "if you have faith that the Lord leads His Church through revelation to those imperfect servants He calls, the Lord will open the windows of heaven to them, as He will to you."

Elder M. Russell Ballard - The Trek Continues!
The greatest thing about this talk was that Elder Ballard gave a nod to one of my church history crushes, Jane Manning James. Her remarkable story is of course more extensive than he could do justice in such a limited time. He was also the one who dedicated her grave marker with the Genesis Group in 2003, and that gives a bit more of an overview. (Her birth date given as 1882 is obviously an error; it should say 1813.)

One day while living with Joseph Smith, his mother gave Jane the opportunity to handle the Urim and Thummim. On a couple of other occasions, Emma Smith offered her the opportunity to be sealed to them, but she didn't understand and declined. In her later years, after Joseph was dead and she understood what she had missed out on, she pleaded with multiple First Presidencies to allow her to be endowed and sealed to him. They courteously refused because of the relatively new policy barring anyone of African descent from priesthood and temple blessings. In 1894 the First Presidency allowed for a special unprecedented ceremony where a white proxy was used to seal her to the Smith family as a servant. (This should not be confused with "slave". She was a servant to them in life, but never a slave, and this position was obviously used in the sealing because she was not a blood relative or spouse.) Jane was understandably less than satisfied with this and continued petitioning to no avail.

I was confused for a long time because both Jane's brother and her husband were named Isaac, which must have been awkward, and after the latter abandoned her she lived with the former until her death. She and her brother Isaac were some of the last people alive who had known Joseph Smith, and so they were treated with great respect and had reserved seats at the front of the Tabernacle. When she died, her obituary was on the front page of the Deseret News, a treatment usually reserved for General Authorities and prominent Utah politicians. President Joseph F. Smith spoke at her funeral. But she was largely forgotten until the racial controversy of the 60s and 70s sparked a renewed interest in black Mormon pioneers. Her temple work was done for her in 1979 by one of the women who wrote about her for the Ensign.

Elder Tad R. Callister - God's Compelling Witness: The Book of Mormon
General Authorities have acknowledged the critics more and more often in recent conferences, and dabbled a bit in apologetics, but I believe this is the most apologetics-heavy conference talk in church history. And most of it's just common sense. From my perspective, secular attempts to explain the existence of the Book of Mormon are frankly pathetic, absurd, laughable, and insufficient if not impossible. I attempted to mock them myself in my less-than-stellar short story "Moroni Saves the World". Despite constant (ridiculous) assurances that there was nothing special about Joseph Smith writing the Book of Mormon, not one critic has ever attempted to meet Hugh Nibley's challenge and duplicate his achievement. Or if they have, they've been too embarrassed by their inevitable failure to mention it to anybody.

Where Elder Callister gives two examples of Book of Mormon details that were unknown in Joseph's day and later vindicated, he could have given scores more. See, for example, the listing in "Boomerang Hits and the Book of Mormon", and then read Mormon's Codex if you're really ambitious. At some point it stretches credulity past its limit to suggest that Joseph Smith made so many lucky guesses, yet that's exactly what critics insist happened. They also still point at a list of alleged anachronisms in the book, ignoring the fact that it used to be much longer, and assuming that we know everything now - just like they did in Joseph's day. The reality is that a very small percentage - 2 or 3 percent if I recall correctly - of Mesoamerican sites have even been excavated. Yes, compared to the alleged alternatives, the story of the angel and the gold plates is far easier to believe. I couldn't help clapping after this talk. I didn't need it, but I liked it.

Elder Stanley G. Ellis - Do We Trust Him? Hard is Good
You know, I'd said to God a few times, in essence, "I'm perfectly willing to endure any pain, make any sacrifice, and wait any number of years to make this thing happen. I will rejoice in my suffering. But if it's not going to happen, then I'd sure like to know that now, and not bother with it." This talk validated my eagerness in an incredible way. Elder Ellis said, "Hard makes us stronger, humbles us, and gives us a chance to prove ourselves." Yes, I thought, let me prove myself! I'll prove myself with the proofiest proof that every proofed!

Elder Neil L. Andersen - The Voice of the Lord
Well, you know, confirmation bias happens to the best of us, and also to me. And the things I was noticing through the Spirit also happened to be the sort of things I wanted to hear anyway, and I was taking some of them out of context. So I worried just a bit that this wasn't a legit way to approach things. And then what did Elder Andersen do in the very last talk of the conference? Related an anecdote of a woman using the Spirit to pick out something he said and apply it in a different context. It was so reassuring my mouth fell open a little, and was the perfect endcap to all the guidance and reassurance I had received up to that point. If you've never had an experience like this, of approaching General Conference with a specific question in mind, you really ought to try it.

I believe that the natural man is to be subjected, not destroyed, and so I feel impressed upon to use my sarcasm for good. A point can often be made far more impactfully through sarcasm than just by stating it. To that end, I created these pages earlier this week, which admittedly are both mostly just quotes with a little bit of commentary:

The Demise of Mormonism

The Hugh Hefner Memorial Page

Next week on this blog: The "Alvin and the Cracrofts" Star Wars Extravaganza

I'm over my head cold! Now I just have the usual cough that I've had off and on since March 2014. Yes, I saw a doctor. He said it was nothing to worry about, just inflammation. He gave me medicine that tasted like motor oil. I had to drink it every day. It didn't do jack for me. I stopped worrying about it. It's just part of my life now. I may as well have smoked.

I went to a wedding reception on Wednesday. It was for me and my beautiful new bride, Felicity Nicholson (nee Jones). You may be familiar with her. She was recently in a moderately successful film in a moderately popular franchise. She'll probably keep using her maiden name for publicity purposes. There is a bit of an age difference, but when you're in love that's just a number. And I made all that up except for the wedding reception part. It was for a friend from church. I know him a little bit and his new wife not at all. I think the reception was the first time I ever spoke to her, but what do I know? People say "Hi Chris" to me and I don't even recognize their faces, so I'm not a reliable source on that. He said to her "Do you know Chris?" and she was like "Yeah, we've met" so maybe that's a more accurate statement.

As I was riding back, the two people in the front seats discussed marriage and how they aren't super into it. I was shocked. Of course, I noticed long ago that most of the Mormons at church don't seem to be nearly as obsessed with marriage as Mormons are stereotypically supposed to be. Watching "The Singles Ward" didn't make me think "Wow, this is so relatable!", it made me think "Wow, Provo Mormons are freaks." (No offense, Provo Mormons.) But I thought I was the only one who didn't have any particular desire for it. Let me be clear. Sometimes I find a really incredible woman whose company I prefer to being alone and I think that sure, I'd like to marry her. But the concept of marriage per se, with no particular candidate in mind, holds very little appeal for me. I'm certainly not motivated to spend one iota of effort looking for such a candidate. I would want to get married because of a woman, not vice-versa. And I guess I'm not as unusual in that as I thought. But I'm not "anti-marriage" as someone once insinuated. Marriage is anti-me.

I didn't participate much in their conversation because I have difficulty inserting my comments in conversations with more than one other person. People don't usually pause at all between remarks, so I can't say anything without cutting someone off, and I'd feel guilty about that. So I mostly just listened. It was good stuff. "Most guys," the girl said to the guy, "I'm not saying you, but most guys only care about three things in a girl. Do I want to have sex with her, is she fairly righteous - she says she wants a temple marriage, and does she agree with and validate everything I say?" I only care about one of those things. I must be really exceptional. She also expressed her appreciation that she doesn't have to pretend to be stupid around her current boyfriend. She said lots of guys are intimidated by intelligence. That's understandable, but the alternative is worse. Talking to stupid people saps my will to live. But other guys are into that? Whatever.

She noticed that I was typing on my laptop and said, "I assume you're doing homework." And I had to admit that I was actually writing comics.

Remember those comics that I wrote but never drew? (See the post category entitled "The Cracrofts".) I started writing them again, but after I cranked out at least fifty on Saturday and realized it would take much much longer to draw the same number, they may never get drawn after all. We'll see. In coming weeks I may share several more like I did last year, which conveniently saves me having to write much in the posts, but here are just a couple for now. Of course, I try to share the ones I'm actually proud of, and there are others that range from mediocre to downright lame. Sometimes I get too focused on moving a story along or preaching my viewpoints and sacrifice actual humor in the process (insert your own quip about me always doing that here). Also, I changed the title from "The Cracrofts" to "Alvin and the Cracrofts" as a chipmunk homage.

There have been a few other changes. It's become more "cartoony" overall as its world now canonically includes not just aliens and cloned dinosaurs but also ghosts and Santa Claus. This is largely because at the end of every year (the comic takes place in real time from 2004 to 2024) I wanted to have a different Christmas parody/homage - I posted the first one, "The Gift of the Magi", last year - and these more often than not have fantasy elements. With her having encountered all these things, Tyler's atheism became less plausible and she's been downgraded to an agnostic. One line I will never cross is having characters break the fourth wall, but they come dangerously close by recognizing the tropes at play around them.

But tropes are our friend. I changed the backstory so that Rachel acquired her pet Komodo dragon, Steve, at age five instead of twenty-four. I thought it made a much better story for her to grow up with him and form a lifelong bond and face the world together. But then I realized that made him too old and he would have to die during the comic's timeframe, because Komodo dragons only live up to thirty years in captivity. I tried to think of a way around this - perhaps yet another fantasy element like the Holy Grail or the Fountain of Youth. But in the end I decided, instead of resolving it, to just "hang a lampshade on it". This is the trope whereby writers draw attention to the implausibility of something without actually explaining it, to make the audience okay with it. This usually works because implausible things do happen in real life, but not without drawing attention. So I just have characters occasionally remark on Steve's incredible longevity a few times over the years. This had the unfortunate side effect of creating one of the least cynical moments I've ever written.

Panel 1
Alvin: Speaking of longevity... Steve's been around forty years, which is ten years longer than most Komodo dragons in captivity. That's just as amazing.
Panel 2
Rachel: Well, most Komodo dragons in captivity have never received as much love as ours.
Alvin: …
Panel 3
(They silently watch Tyler playing with Steve)

To compensate for that emotion, here's a more autobiographical one. The name of the company involved has NOT been changed.

Panel 1
Alvin: #@$%! CenturyLink should be embarrassed to charge money for this #@$% wi-fi service.
Panel 2
Alvin: It should not take me eight #@$% minutes to load a five second long gif. There's no excuse for this #@$%. Screw this abomination of a company.
Panel 3
Alvin: Sorry about that, Rachel. I'm just stressed.
Rachel: And you're trying to relax by staring at a blank white webpage?

I don't think I shared this one yet. If I did, it's worth sharing again. If I had to pick only one strip to get drawn, this would probably be it. My sister thought it was gross, but what does she know?

Panel 1
Alvin: Playing with your dolls, sweetie?
Tyler: No duh.
Panel 2
Alvin: What's Barbie doing today?
Tyler: Removing Ken's head with a meat cleaver.
Panel 3
Alvin: That's... not very nice.
Tyler: If she's told him once to get his dirty underwear off the floor, she's told him a thousand times.

This is another one that I'm very pleased with and don't think I've shared. Mary is a college student interning with a high school biology teacher, and Tyler and David are her helpers.

Panel 1
Tyler: Hello, Mary. Up to any fun projects lately?
Mary: I've been testing a new perfume that simulates pheromones more thoroughly than anything before. It should be super effective.
Panel 2
Tyler: Oh, are you testing it on yourself?
Mary: Ha! Not yet. It's not in the stage where it can be used on humans.
Panel 3
Mary: That's a side project, though. We've got some real work to do today.
Tyler: Right. David?
David (off-screen): Just a minute. Have you ever noticed how cute these lab mice are?

I finally put one of my favorite ideas ever into writing. It was a stand-alone idea featuring Katy Perry herself, but I figured it still works without her so I added it to this franchise:

Panel 1
Alvin: Why so happy, Rachel?
Rachel: I almost ran over a bushy-tailed rodent. I swerved just in time, and I was so relieved that I got a feeling of intense euphoria.
Panel 2
Alvin: So what you're saying is –
Rachel: Right. I missed a squirrel and I liked it.

One of my very first ideas when I decided I wanted to write comics is never going to be used because it doesn't fit how the characters ended up. So this will probably be the only place you'll ever see it. Feel privileged!

Panel 1
(A bunch of people are being held hostage in a bank)
Criminal: All right, everybody stay down and be quiet!
Alvin: Please, sir... I have a wife and seven kids at home.
Panel 2
Criminal: Are you asking me to let you go?
Alvin: I'm asking you to shoot me.

Aaand a sneak peek at a new character! I figured Tyler needs authority figures to drive crazy at school as well as home. But don't worry, the new character will dish it out as well as she takes it.

​Panel 1
Bill: Tyler, Al tells me you talk to your principal a lot. She's quite a looker. Do you know if she's single?
Tyler: Yeah, I think so.
Panel 2
Bill: Excellent.
Tyler: With all due respect, Uncle Bill, Principal Donaldson is a fine, classy lady. She deserves better than your nonsense.
Panel 3
Bill: Oh.
Tyler: But since I hate her guts, I'd be happy to arrange it.

^ Inspired by Erica, a really classy and attractive barber I went to as a kid. More than once I heard my dad say that it blew his mind that she was still single, and that he wanted to set her up with one of his friends but none of them were worthy of her.

Me: I found a book to help me with you.
Her: Do you have a marker?

She thinks she's so funny. You know, I do think it's funny how she threatens physical violence against me while I would never dream of doing the same to her. I understand why this double standard exists and I'm okay with it. I have joked about hurting her on accident. One time she was inside a box to cut it up and I was like, "Who left this box laying around here? I'd better flatten it. I'd better stomp on it to make it flat." She, by contrast, has threatened to stomp on me on purpose. Specifically on my throat.

I shared cartoons a few times and then just stopped but now for some reason this cartoon has been on my brain lately. It's one of my favorite Popeye cartoons because it's just cute and breaks away from the usual plot formula. Olive sassing Popeye by mimicking his unique speech pattern under her breath is priceless too imho. Ignore the one teensy little racist part. After I looked this up, I kept looking and accidentally stayed up way past my bedtime watching Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies ("Pigs in a Polka", "Robinson Crusoe Jr.", "Ali Baba Bound", "Porky's Railroad", "We, the Animals Squeak!", "The Henpecked Duck", and "The Coy Decoy", in case you were wondering).