But there was this one incident that really brought home to me that no religion is immune to weirdos, and it didn’t take long to figure out why. This is how I converted to paganism–and then met someone who exemplified a mindset I thought I’d left way behind me, causing me to abandon religion altogether.
Permadeath is a gaming term that means that once a character dies, that’s it: they’re gone forever. I still remember the first time I ever heard about it and played a game that featured it. And life sure does look different–and better–when one looks at it from a permadeath perspective.
I thought that today–the most chocolate-y day of the year, so to speak–was a good day to bring everyone up to speed. I haven’t written about it in a long time and I’ve learned a lot since then. So today I want to show you what rolling to disbelieve is, and what it feels like to make your roll at last.
Clothes fascinate me. They’re a powerful sign of our own personal individuality and a statement about how we view ourselves, our place in whatever tribe we call our own, and what aspirations and opinions we hold. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been fascinated with the subject. Weirdly, until recently I wasn’t much for modern fashion itself, but the everyday clothes that people choose and wear is something I could talk about all day long. In my case, the sartorial apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Today I’ll show you how.
Once we think we’ve weathered all the manipulations Christians throw at apostates, along comes the Magic Christian: One who is totally convinced that ‘God’ told them how to resolve every issue we have with their religion.
One of the weirdest practices you’ll ever encounter among right-wing Christians has to be “speaking in tongues.” I strongly suspect that more people know about snake handling than know about speaking in tongues—and for a reason. So here’s a guide to this wild fundamentalist practice!
Biff was so proud of himself, but I was so horrified.
Have you ever had a really embarrassing deed haunt you for years? This is one of mine. Set the Wayback Machine for the late 1980s: I was 17 years old and had been dating Biff a few months. I’d been Pentecostal a year or so previously, but had drifted out Read more
I wanted to mention one thing that happened during those horse-riding lessons before we draw back the curtain on them for a while, and that is the value of being flexible about your plans. It came to pass, near the end of the lessons, that it was a very hot Read more
This is a short story about getting lost and found again. A long time ago, I was driving through Omaha, Nebraska (as opposed to Omaha, Colorado, I guess) for the very first time. I was trying to find a particular Japanese restaurant there that I’d been told was very good, Read more