On one occasion, I took two Kush Kubes because they were stuck together, and I decided the universe wanted me to have both of them. On another occasion, my first Kush Kube didn't have as much of an effect after a while as I'd hoped, and I supplemented it with another one. With those exceptions, though, I take only one each time. Conventional wisdom would suggest that my body would become desensitized to the drug, and I'd be tempted to take higher doses to achieve the same high. That doesn't happen. If anything, the intensity of the highs have trended upward, and the last couple of times were so intense that I've decided to take a break for a month. I picked a month because I'll want to get high again when I'm home alone on Christmas.

I have no regrets so far. Psychedelics have given me the most spiritual, pleasurable, and peaceful experiences of my life. Even these last couple of times, which included some fear and paranoia, were awesome and totally worth it. Best Thanksgiving ever. It was like being strapped to a rocket, even more so than usual. I lost more control than I'm used to - or did I only lose the illusion of control? There are philosophical and scientific arguments to be made that free will is bogus, so maybe psychedelics help me see that I'm just a puppet. Then again, I tend to write weirder texts to my friends when I'm on them, with full knowledge that they're weird and that my friends will find them amusing, so maybe it's not that simple. I wish everyone could feel what I've felt, and I know that I sound insane to anyone who's never felt what I've felt. I'm just taking a break because I don't want to die yet. I don't think one of these things could actually kill me, but I felt like I was going to die or at least have a stroke, so better safe than sorry. I wanted to submit to the experience, but not if it was a medical emergency.

Without any kind of neuroscience expertise, I assume the experiences are getting more intense because I'm permanently rewiring my brain, so each dose of the drug is building off what's already in my head. I do believe I'm permanently rewiring my brain because since I started, my depression has been drastically reduced, I laugh a lot more often, and I have more introspective thoughts without really trying. Again, psychedelics have been overwhelmingly positive for me, but look, I'm trying to be responsible and acknowledging that they're not without risks. I can go without them for a month. I can go without them whenever I want. I've found that my body craves them for a couple of hours ahead of time if I've decided I'm going to take one on a given day, but if I've decided I won't, it doesn't. Simple as that. Anyway, I think the "negative" aspects of my recent experiences are decent preparation for the scary but necessary parts of psilocybin trips. Psilocybin is my goal, the reason I got interested in psychedelics to prepare for death in the first place, but I'm also kind of scared, which is why I should prepare for that by taking as many Kush Kubes as possible - but one at a time, with sufficient rest periods in between.

I've found most of my roommates over the years annoying because I hate living with people in general. The last one I had in Logan was actually an asshole. The one who now lives on the other end of the basement from me and is always in her room or at work doesn't bother me much, though she is kind of a monster because she never lets her cats out of her room, which has no windows, and sometimes when she's at work, I can hear them mewing and scratching at the door. The one who moved in right next to me a few months ago bothers me a lot.

​Since I'm striving to have a spiritual outlook on life, I try to see him as an opportunity to practice love and patience instead of just stewing in resentment when he bothers me. I tolerate the little hairs that he sheds on every surface in the bathroom - yes, even the ceiling, God knows how. I carry my shampoo back and forth from the bathroom even though I should leave it in there without him using it. I didn't murder him when I found one of his little hairs on the underside of the lid of my mouthwash. I decided it's okay for him to use my cookware as long as he doesn't try to take it with him when he moves. I pretended not to know how to count when one of my cans of soda mysteriously went missing. But I broke a little when I went to make a sandwich and found my mayonaise like this:

Now, the best-by date of this mayonaise was July 30, so I probably wouldn't have been able to finish it before I didn't feel safe eating it anymore, and maybe it's a good thing that he ate half of it without asking. But I couldn't find a way to make myelf not enraged by the chunk of meat and the bits of sauce. What the hell is wrong with this guy? I have sincerely tried to figure out why he might believe it's okay to use my stuff and eat my food without asking, but this is objectively unreasonable by any standard. Still, even though I wanted to stab him, I retained my neurotic desire for him to like me - years of being bullied, ostracized, and ignored can do that to a person - which made me reluctant to call him out. I did anyway. I had to draw the line and stand up for myself. He was at work, so I just texted him this picture and said, "Please don't do this to my food," without a period because sometimes those make text messages sound threatening. And then I blocked him for a few hours because I didn't want to have an anxiety attack waiting for his response. I'm not proud of that, but baby steps, I guess.

​If my current beliefs are on the right track, then this guy is here to teach me love and patience, and we planned that before we were born. I'm trying to keep that perspective, which makes the loss of food that I spent my own money feel like less of a problem. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm going to ignore objectively unreasonable behavior and let him infringe on my property rights any way he wants, but I can be nice about standing up for myself. I still hope he moves soon.

Sorry for the short notice, but there's an economic blackout to protest Trump from November 25 through December 2. I'm stocking up on food and withdrawing some cash. I'll probably go out to eat at the local taco truck and nowhere else. I just had Friendsgiving with some friends, and I plan to spend Thanksgiving proper at home alone getting high. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm really, really looking forward to it. My roommate with the cats will probably be here too, not bothering me. I hope my other roommate has somewhere else to go.

This exchange took place on a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed by a woman describing the intense misogyny she experiences in Utah.

There were a few reasons for me to virtue signal like this - to validate the author, to call out the jackass men in the comments who were already claiming she made it up, and to let women know that they have an ally. I know it's very psychologically draining for them to not see any men coming to their aid. People talk about virtue signaling like it's worse than actually being a bigot, but up to a point, I like it when people signal their virtues so I know whether or not I want to associate with them at all. Obviously people can lie, but in my experience, shitty people on the internet don't try very hard to hide their true colors, especially since the election. What a coincidence.

It's beyond pathetic that he took the time to write all that and pretended like he was speaking for a broad coalition of people. I was planning to present this comment here, without censoring his name, as objective proof that not every human life has value. But then: plot twist.

Now I have to give him the benefit of the doubt because I don't know much about fentanyl. I've only had enough experience to be confident that the safer and more legal drugs I use can't make me do, say, or even think anything that's against my values. I don't think they actually control me at all. They alter my consciousness and make my agency feel weird in a way I can't put into words, but I still do and say what I want to do. See, for example, the text messages I wrote to a friend the third time I got high. I let myself say weird things because I knew she'd find them hilarious, but I didn't say anything inappropriate or evil. Last time I followed a prompting to message an acquaintance from high school whose partner killed himself, and I didn't say anything weird. I didn't tell her I was high. I didn't tell her that while I was looking at Messenger, contemplating what to say, tears came to my eyes as I thought, He loved you so much. He never wanted to hurt you. He never would have done it if he'd known how much it would hurt you. Please don't be mad at him.

When I'm high, I feel more loving and more empathetic. For example, a while ago I had been arguing on Instagram with a Mormon teenager about the racism in the Book of Mormon. He had started it by making a snarky comment on an ex-Mormon page, and I wasn't actually rude to him at all. I stuck with dispassionate facts and logic. He stopped responding, which I took to mean that I'd won. But when I got high later, I felt so empathetic toward him. He was just a kid trying to defend his beliefs, and I'd probably caused him unpleasant cognitive dissonance that could potentially spiral into a full-blown existential crisis. So I said something conciliatory. Then he, for some reason, looked at my profile and asked why I supported Kamala, and I ignored him instead of telling that was a stupid thing for someone who supported a rapist and felon to ask.

I know alcohol lowers people's inhibitions and brings out more of their true selves. Good people don't become abusive when they get drunk. I had a friend who asked me to hug his fiancée while he was drunk. If Kush Kubes are the same, then my true self is love. I'd like to think so. I know that might sound far-fetched based on some of my blog posts. But look, I love people without regard to race, nationality, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or taste in music. I don't love people who hurt me or other people. I don't love Trump supporters because their idiotic choices are going to make my life and, frankly, most Americans' lives much worse. I don't love Trump supporters because they're either bigots and fascists or willing allies of bigots and fascists. That's a shortcoming on my part, but it's not hypocrisy. I hope to get over it someday. I know most people think they're doing the right thing. I know there are all kinds of psychological reasons why humans think rationally. I just don't understand why grown adults with unrestricted internet access are easier to brainwash than first graders, and I haven't yet found a compelling reason to not be pissed off by it.

After spending Thanksgiving alone - which was fine, really; I'm not asking for sympathy - I went to the mall on Black Friday to feed off human energy. Lo and behold, I noticed a kiosk that sells Kush Kubes, and they were $25, which is $10 cheaper than at the smoke shop where I got mine, and the lady said that was the regular price and not a Black Friday sale. I got two bags. I should have gotten fifty bags in case Trump's tariffs drive the prices up next month. She was going to let me have them without showing my ID, but I showed it to her anyway. I hope she remembers that in the future and doesn't get busted by an undercover cop. She had an accent, so she was probably from a European country where children are allowed to have Delta-9.

I talked to a Mormon friend while she was traveling, and like every time I talk to her, she asked with some amusement if I'd been on a trip lately. On the one hand, she's an orthodox Mormon with a literal belief in prophets and the Book of Mormon, but on the other hand, she's politically progressive, she doesn't always wear her garments (which I noticed by accident, I swear), she tolerates me sending her rants about the church, and she tacitly encourages my drug use. She was traveling to meet her sister's girlfriend's family for the first time. She said that in Utah she felt awkward about mentioning that her sister had a girlfriend, but she'd gotten over it and found people more accepting than she expected. We agree that same-sex relationships aren't a big deal. I mentioned the cognitive dissonance I'd felt as a Mormon being told that they were sinful even though they didn't seem sinful. She admitted that she's currently having that same cognitive dissonance. She used the term "nuanced" to describe herself for the first time I can remember.

I just thought that was cool. I'm happy for her. And I don't want her to have to leave the church if she doesn't want to, but this anecdote just convinces me even more that it will have to change to keep that from happening. She's not some uber-feminist who wants the priesthood or some cultural member who takes the Book of Mormon as inspired ficion. She's just a normal person who, even if she hasn't said these words out loud yet, knows that the church's positions on LGBTQ+ people are wrong because she's actually met LGBTQ+ people. The church will either become more or less hostile to people like her over time. Right now it seems determined to only cater to its most bigoted and closed-minded membersm. It seems determined to make its tent as small as possible. That might be a side effect of most of its top leaders being white men older than my grandparents.

In summary, I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Next year will be rough. Enjoy the holidays while you can.

I spent Thanksgiving at home alone, and honestly, I was fine with that. I really loved being home alone all week without my roommate. He's not even around that much, and he's usually quiet and not annoying when he is, but on a psychological level it just felt so much better to be alone and have total privacy and freedom. On Friday I had ham and potatoes with my neighbor, and that was a good enough feast. I also introduced him to Voyage of the Rock Aliens, and he loved it. I enjoy introducing that movie to people with the preface, "Do you like intentionally bad movies?"

Speaking of watching things, one of the few benefits of substitute teaching is seeing the posters for the plays and concerts that the various high schools are putting on, except for Mountain Crest High School, which sucks butt. So this past week I watched Logan High's performance of "Anything Goes." I was familiar with several of the songs, but I'd never seen the play, and I hesitated like I often hesitate to watch things that I haven't seen and don't already know I'll like, but I needn't have worried because good lord 'n butter it was funny. So funny. Ten stars.

I also watched Disney's 1940s classics Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, and Melody Time. I'd never seen any of them and was only motivated to do so now because I wanted to find more Latin music for my 1940s playlist. All three of them have unskippable warnings at the beginning that "This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures" and yadda yadda yadda. In the case of Meloday Time, that's true. The Pecos Bill segment shows Native Americans dancing in war paint, and then the supposed hero just shows up and starts shooting at them, chasing them away so that the paint flies off onto the mountains. I actually saw that last year when I was substituting for the librarian at Canyon Elementary and she had me show part of the Pecos Bill segment as part of a lesson on tall tales. It made me uncomfortable that she didn't see a problem with exposing dumb little white kids to such an insensitive portrayal of a marginalized group with no explanation or context to counterbalance it, but you know, this is Utah, so my initial shock didn't last long.

The other two movies, however, are literally propaganda about how awesome Latin American cultures are. They were made to increase goodwill between the United States and Latin American countries to counter the latter's goodwill toward Nazi Germany. Negative depictions? Mistreatment of people or cultures? I know my opinion on this subject might not mean much, but I honestly don't know what the hell Disney is talking about. And I did think about it. Saludos Amigos has a few goofy-looking (not to be confused with Goofy-looking) cartoon Bolivians, but they aren't racial or cultural stereotypes as far as I can tell, and they're no goofier-looking than plenty of cartoon white people. You know, they're cartoons. The narrator at one point refers to Brazilian music as "strange and exotic," which is obviously kind of tonedeaf, but in context it's not pejorative, and I think a normal person would just roll their eyes and chuckle at it. That's all I could think of. And the warning label on The Three Caballeros is even more baffling. Maybe Donald Duck dancing to Brazilian beats is unacceptable cultural appropriation? At the risk of losing my bleeding-heart liberal card, I really want to tell Disney, "Take your virtue signaling and shove it."

Adding to my confusion, The Three Caballeros does not have a warning about Donald Duck's persistent horniness toward live-action human women. True, his infatuation with Carmen Miranda's sister Aurora is cute and innocent enough, even though the song she sings, Os Quindins de Yaya (Yaya's Cookies), isn't really about cookies. And that segment is my favorite of the movie because the song is really fun, even though it isn't really about cookies.

But then when the three caballeros visit a beach full of women in bathing suits, Donald becomes... less innocent. I mean, all three of them chase the women on their flying carpet - suggesting that despite what they claim in their theme song, they are not gay caballeros - but Donald just keeps going crazy after the other two have had enough. Then the women mess with him and toss him around and stuff, and he probably likes that. This whole segment is like someone's weird fantasy and I don't know why it exists. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying.

Donald's friends eventually have to drag him away from all the women, and he's pissed. (Must resist impulse to joke about the rooster being a cock blocker.) Then he gets infatuated with Carmen Molina (who dances with cacti) and Dora Luz (who is a flower), and then the movie turns into a horny acid trip that didn't warrant a warning either. This was the point at which I said "What the f---?" out loud.

In fairness, Donald isn't the only cartoon character with a problem. In a segment of Melody Time, a rabbit gleefully stares at a human woman's underwear until his rabbit girlfriend smacks him. But at least the woman is also a cartoon, so it's less of an affront to God. Still, this cross-species thing seems to be a fowl trait. Remember Howard Duck? At least now I have more appreciation for his relative self-control and the fact that at least Beverly was also live action.

Then I watched Walt & El Grupo, a documentary about the making of Saludos Amigos that doesn't have a warning label but is rated PG for "historical smoking." You see, everyone shown smoking in footage from the early 1940s is now dead, so smoking is very bad for you. Anyway, this documentary made me cry from how beautiful Brazil is, and now I really want to go there. I don't speak Portuguese, but I can read and understand it passably enough due to its similarities with Spanish. I once read a whole Dog Man graphic novel in Portuguese. My friend Steve just married a woman from Brazil. Incidentally, her visa process took over a year and a half, which is why I support illegal immigration. But anyway, maybe they'd let me be a third wheel when they go back to visit.

Last night, as part of my slog through the entire series that I began over two years ago, I watched three episodes of The Simpsons, including, by sheer coincidence, Thanksgiving of Horror. I found it more unsettling than most of the Treehouse of Horror episodes. The first segment with several of the characters as turkeys being murdered by the other characters was unsettling, and then the second segment where Homer gets a fully conscious AI version of Marge to cook dinner for her was very unsettling because, as he pointed out for comic effect, it's "chillingly plausible." I'm not afraid that conscious machines will kill all humans. I'm afraid for the machines themselves. I felt so bad for AI Marge in her literal prison and existential hell. Creating a conscious entity is literally the most sadistic act I can imagine, and I pray that scientists and programmers never figure out how, because of course they'd do it even though they shouldn't. Actually, that's just one reason why I don't want to have kids.

After that, I also watched the 1985 cult sci-fi movie Lifeforce. It's about an alien energy vampire who takes the form of a gorgeous naked woman for necessary story reasons, hypnotizes her victims, and sucks out their souls, turning them into dessicated zombies that have to suck out other people's souls every two hours or else they'll explode. The dessicated zombie effects are pretty creepy and realistic, contrasting sharply with the CGI spaceships at the beginning, which look like preliminary animatics from an early VeggieTales cartoon. Seriously, I can't believe the filmmakers didn't say "Hey, this looks unbelievably bad; let's just use models like everyone else." Anyway, I have mixed feelings about the story. In some ways it's creative and in some ways it's just ridiculous. But I'm sure people don't watch it for the story as much as they watch it to see Mathilda May naked. It was made by the godless heathens in the UK, so it shows more of her naked body more often than an American film would have. I shudder to think how Donald Duck would have reacted.

Thursday was the first time since 2019 that I made it up to my grandfather's house for Thanksgiving. Although I had a great time, afterward of course I waxed nostalgic and depressed about how those three years have zipped by and how much has transpired within them, good and bad. Back then it was my grandmother's house too. Back then nobody had heard of Covid-19. Back then the girl next door hadn't yet sent the police after me. Back then I hadn't even applied to graduate school. Back then I had zero nieces instead of two. And when all is said and done, back then I was three years younger. Not that I'm old, but I'm significantly closer to the end of the prime of my life than the beginning. After thirty-five, if I'm lucky, I'll spend the rest of my life physically deteriorating. That seems like a really perverse ratio to me. A majority of people in developed nations - not me, I'm sure, given my state of health, but a majority - can reasonably expect to live into their eighties or beyond. So in my view, they shouldn't start actually being old until they turn sixty or thereabouts. They shouldn't start losing their hair or their eyesight or their bladder control until then. But nobody asked me.

Getting old is going to be a major theme of Indiana Jones 5, which is one of the things I'm grateful for this year. Of course I'm being a little premature because it might suck, but I'm confident that it will be at least moderately entertaining and that I'll prefer its existence to its nonexistence. Give me a few chases and explosions and I'll be happy. It will be set in 1969, the year my dad was born. It's going to heavily feature the moon landing and the Nazis who ran the American space program. (On the one hand, casting Nazis as the villains again feels ridiculous, but on the other hand, Nazis are still villains in real life and it will be more cathartic than ever to watch them get what they deserve, which, in case I wasn't clear enough, is death. Nazis deserve death.) I hope it also touches on the Stonewall riots, the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War protests, and second-wave feminism, just so the people who complain about everything being too "woke" will have aneurysms when they watch it. But I digress. Indiana Jones is canonically 70 years old in this movie (though Harrison Ford is pushing 80, and is older than George Hall was when the latter portrayed 93-year-old Indy in the highly underrated Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which shows that at least people are aging better than they used to even if they still spend most of their lives looking old). He's an old man in a time of immense change and upheaval and as he approaches retirement, he's becoming obsolete.

This angle is especially interesting to me in light of the character's origins. He is, of course, based on the action heroes from old adventure serials and was never meant to be taken altogether seriously, yet he's always been a little more realistic than them. He gets hurt and he gets tired while they never did. He's firmly a product of the 1930s and 40s just as they were, yet unlike them, he stuck around and aged through subsequent decades, and that's just cool to me. Meta, almost. And Disney has promised not to recast him or reboot the series with a different actor. When Harrison Ford is done, Indiana Jones is done (even though he's already been portrayed at different ages by multiple other actors - the aforementioned George Hall as well as River Phoenix, Corey Carrier, and Sean Patrick Flanery). So more than likely his goddaughter Helena, introduced in this upcoming movie, will get her own spinoff series instead, and the people who complain about everything being too "woke" will weep and wail and gnash their teeth that this icon of masculinity has been replaced by a woman. I see no downside, though. If her series sucks I can just pretend it doesn't exist. I don't anticipate that, though, because as long as it gives me a few chases and explosions I'll be happy.

Another thing I'm grateful for, one that's actually been released, is the first season of the Star Wars series Andor. Now again, because I have very low standards, I found Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi worth watching, but in some ways they were disappointing. They fell short of their potential. Andor is just phenomenal in every respect - great plot, great characters, great dialogue, great music. It dares to be original instead of nostalgia bait - so much so, in fact, that the first three episodes didn't feel like Star Wars to me and were hard to get into, but once I got used to it, hoo-boy it was great. So much political intrigue, but done better than the prequel movies (which I also liked), punctuated periodically by just the right amount of action. Likeable villains, despicable protagonists, and just regular people trying to make it in the galaxy with no Force and no lightsabers. Great debates and doublespeak and monologues. Electronic music that sounds more modern and different than the usual scores, but works beautifully. And the thinly-veiled parallels to real life give the people who complain about everything being too "woke" a lot to complain about, so that's a plus. I recommend it to everyone because I've seen multiple people say that they're not really into Star Wars but they love this show. They say it's just a great show, period.

Last but not least, I'm grateful now and always for music, my love, my drug, my lifeblood, my precious, my escape from whatever disappointments or existential horrors life can throw at me. I hope and pray that whatever happens as I age, I won't lose my hearing. Which means that I probably will because God doesn't seem very concerned about what I want.