The Diary of a Common Man

By Tevada Dismas Pay-Pey

A Lesser Word Book

Published by The Lesser Word

Cover and illustrations by Tevada Dismas Pay-Pey

Text design and typeset by Microsoft

Published in the United States by The Lesser Word, Inc., Minnesota, an independent publisher of Catholic thought.

Table of Contents

I 11/13/24 : My name is Marc. 4

II 11/14/24, Thursday : My Father 9

III 11/15/24, Friday : Speech to Text Adventures. 15

IV 11/16/24, Saturday : The McDonald Revolutionaries. 22

V 11/18/24, Monday : I am Turkey. 27

VI 11/19/24, Tuesday : When gods play Ape. 30

VII 11/20/24, Wednesday : A Just Inequality. 35

VII 11/26/24, Tuesday : A Woman's Mid-Life Horses. 41

IX 11/29/24, Friday : A Discourse on Chastity. 46

X 12/03/24, Tuesday : The Boring Page. 57

I
11/13/24 : My name is Marc

It’s been a long time since I’ve told a good tale. Being crunched to chairs, twenty two years of school, the most I’d like to do is step out of my classes and punch a bear. Do I have old drafts, never published? Yea, I do. Do these make sense to me being written before I was baptized? No, they don’t. Now I’m here trying to write something new, being new under heaven and suffering from the scourge of no ideas.

I’m also fasting. I hunger. I thirst. I once knew a preacher who said that with God one shall never hunger or thirst. Well that preacher never fasted, so I’m guessing his god kept him fed.

But who am I to complain? I hunger and thirst by choice. The issue then, is finding work to die for.

See, growing up, I read a great deal of fantasy: superheroes, knights, wizards—the whole cabal of fairy tale. As an adult what I like most about them is their utility. The tale of King Arthur prevents a man from marrying a wench. Beauty and Beast teaches women to treat people kindly no matter their circumstance. Rapunzel teaches men why it’s not a good idea to break into a girl’s house when her parents aren’t home. Then there are fables, for which intellectuals of the day decry for having morals, but to this I say children gain much more reading about the Boy Who Could Not Fear over the literary “masterpiece” of say The Great Gatsby. The former will teach how far courage can take a man. The latter illustrates justifications, excuses, for why a man may find his low state in life acceptable, then no solution as to how escape evil habits for virtue.

In fact, this is a rather difficult point for today’s education. For young men and young women, their lives would be more enriched reading fables than books of anxiety, books whose sole purpose is to highlight problems without offering solutions. These books are enjoyed by critics who are modernists for painting the “reality of the time.” But this aside, as for what kind of book mine is to be, I can’t imagine since nothing of note has happened in my life. If I were to write a fantasy, it would have no utility. See, what I like about fairy tales is that they’re set in reality. Princesses and princes do in fact exist, and so does magic. The modern literary landscape suffers from escapism. I also suffer this thing, but I want no part.

A thought strikes that I should write the future I wish to live. Well, I write I’m free from debt. I write my books do sell. I write that what I write has utility. That last, utility, is the hardest part. What use are words on page? When every work is brought to judge will what’s written judge for life or death?

I’ve lived a life of dying. How can a write a tale of living? By spinning the focus on a woman? Woman, the daughters of Eve, with them God teases hope and life. There can be no child without them. Vice versa, but of family what’s there to write? I hunger and I thirst, and of my work I—the people around me offer no hope. Nothing I do is good enough. I will expire, and die, and finally know the light. But I suffer now these palmsy pains by which I suffer no affliction except that of my own mind. I am stuck with myself, whom I hate, and I cannot pretend anything I do will make anything better.

So let these writings be kept. A diary of the common man of 2025. The date is November 13^th of 2024. There is no story. There’s only real life, and the story will be this droll life living in an America who no longer dreams.

Before I end, let me think of a line to begin with.

My name is Marc. This Thanksgiving I’ll be twenty-two years old. I live in Springtown, Minnesota, the state where half the year is snow. Springtown sits south of Minneapolis, the capital. It used to be a quiet suburb before the Somalis and every gentry white looking to shove their kid into Springtown schools moved in. The year 2016? Every sophomore that got their license played the I-35 like Need for Speed. Nowadays? Praying rosaries!

Growing up, I guess you could say I had an average, Asian childhood. Get good grades. Go to good college. Get good job like doctor, like lawyer, like Wolf of Wallstreet guy. Keep rulers and the gaslight as your guide. Well I got everything right except the good job. Coming out of my prestigious business school, coming out of the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management, I have a job as a life insurance salesman lined up.

Doctor or life insurance salesman? Doctor or salesman? I curl just to thinking of it. All that schooling for a job which I could have been happy with right out of high school! Oh if I were a Knight of Columbus, Catholic, four years ago! Where were my Roman Dark Age edits Freshman year of high school? I fell off a cliff and smashed my loins. Where were my Christianity edits when I was a young man looking for ways to keep my health? Anywhere, but school I think. If I spent more time studying DOGE coin than studying Algebra, I could have been a millionaire right now.

Uh-huh. Investing on whose money? Well if I wasn’t jewed out of working at McDonalds by child labor laws, I’d have at least five years of rent saved on that clown’s $40,000 salary. Five years of rent into Dogecoin in 2016. I’d be rich.

But no, I had to study algebra and—excuse me, I’m losing myself in complaint. See I know every careless thing said will be brought into judgement, but so will every thought. Every thought! If that’s the case, the only thing I can do is think, and write until I can think better thoughts. There’s shame, but not an ultimate shame for laying down a rant!

Back to life insurance salesman. If it were up to me, the new Catholic me, I’d still be working part-time at the local Cracker Barrel, but the old me, the gnome, goyim, did such shameful things that I can never go back! A Christian, can not speak of what I did and tried to do, but to Hell with the workplace romances I never had! It’s embarrassing enough that I tried being the gnome I was! The details, I realize, are too abstract. Just know, sin robbed me of a good thing: respectable references and a bridge to friends. And now, I’m doing it all over again. A kind manager, a man whom I respect, is willing to take a chance on me, an inexperienced welp, and I’m going to have to, again, work my butt off to become something I would have never imagined myself to be, a salesman, except for insurance instead of biscuits from the South.

On the bright side, life insurance salesman for the Knights of Columbus, this religious order backed by the prayers of Blessed Father Micheal McGivney patron saint of immigrants, is a job I’d love if it weren’t for college loans.

I don’t check for fear of the interest, but the last I’ve seen of it it’s been backed into my checks at the magnanimous sum of $46,000 dollars, plus interest. I could lower it to a reasonable sum, but I won’t because after betting everything on black in a memecoin stock called Harrypotterobamasonic10inu, I bet all my winnings again on another stock called “The Fall of Central Banking.” In hindsight, what the heck will I do with “The Fall of Central Banking” if central banking actually falls! I should have used my winnings to buy myself a gun. Now that’d have more utility than “The Fall of Central Banking” because if it actually happened, like Borderlands idiots like myself would be better trading lead.

See now, the struggle of common man! Excuse me, once again. Objectively, my behaviors aren’t common at all. On the bell curve of commonness, I would land in the flatline of loserdom. If ten-percent of men know great success then there are ten-percent of men who know great failure. I’m a part of the bottom ten-percent. I suffer the terrible perk of having every potential to become a successful man while living the terrible reality of wasting my talons.

As I write, my Professor who is a salesman, is teaching us how to sell while I’m sat here ranting away to my NSA monitored laptop.

But what can I say about school, about college? It’s wrong! In a room full of beautiful women, I’d rather —— than talking about stocks! Now, I’m no longer a dog, but the situation of school as it’s structured today runs against natural order! Men should learn with men, and if they’re with women then the two sexes should prioritize acclaiming the virtues heaven endowed them with.

I could be listening to my Professor. I could be preparing for my future, but my largest bother is being unable to socialize normally in a natural environment! Do you think an African barbarian would ever need a self-help book on how to socialize. Of course not! Because his environment’s in line with nature will enough so he may know his tribe. It’s a mess, really. I know more names from my schoolyears than I ever did in college. The village is real, but in this America who dreams no longer, the Force has killed it.

And why, tuning out my Professor to write, I feel alive. The diary of a common man has no worth, but tracking the issue of my days makes me feel alive, and this November I’ll write more than I need, and men will be take note of me enough to buy, and I don’t know right now whether this script will be a con or utility, but I know that I have to do something to teach, to order, and to right this devil’s peace.

Group activities. I have to do that now. So, I guess I’ll end this part here.

***

I’m back. Got some minutes to burn before the bus heads out. During the group activity it struck me how often it is that men of faith are those whom I don’t expect. It was something as simple as a necklace with the holy cross. Being as I am, a common man amidst common man, I—let me look at myself objectively even though I fear mirrors. Unto me, they reflect an image of fantasy. What seen’s a ghost, a specter for which I am not. Surely, I am uglier than the it reveals, but with this window across from me, I will look at myself objectively.

Wool peacoat, black pants, shoes with no brand, tie, sweater, white shirt. Lenin, I look like that devil, Lenin. Vlad, Putin, Theodore Roosevelt. I’m a man outside of time, and standing as a Lao in Viking land of Germs, Danes, and Scands who have since mixed their blood away, here I stand far below the average man. In this presidential garb, do I command? I say nothing with my mouth, but my gait, my appearance. Is it not comical that a man they should look down on wears clothes that forces one to look upon? That he says, Peon I am that I am. I like my long-coats. I like my ties. I’ll wear them!

I am sat here in this “sophisticated” dress as a black from the hood put it, in the atrium of Coffman Hall. Next to the window which I use to view myself, there are windows in every hall to remind that one is always watched, and in the background is a young man, twenty most likely, in a baseball cap playing a melancholy concerto on the piano.

I give attention given to that which people give no attention: clothes. I take note because, by seeing I come to terms with believing, believing who I am. Somehow, this image I see in the glass was made for love and to love. Yet, I live in an environment where nine out of ten in a social hall busy themselves with matters outside of time. On phones, laptops. This wouldn’t be an issue if not every ear were plugged!

Maybe this is my fault. I’m supposed to love, but I don’t know how. I don’t have anything to offer except myself. And of myself, there are people who would like to use myself, but only for evil and not for good.

See now, my predicament? My fault of mind? This fault of mine? This all may be difficult to understand. I am a fruitless man.

The work I am to do. I don’t yet know. Can life as a salesman be of any fruit? What matters to me: friends, family, a lover to protect. It all seems far from me.

Except, once more perhaps I lie. I do have friends. I do have family. I don’t have a lover, but one should not have such things until virtue allows.

But myself. See now what I wear. No one dresses like myself. No one is like myself. Maybe some men perhaps, but woman? Should I expect a flesh of my flesh, bone of my bones?

I speak like a child. I’ve greater concerns than this. First, I must acquire a means of work. Then there’s my bus. I will write later.

II
11/14/24, Thursday : My Father

This is the only generation that may write while listening to some vapid tune. Scratch that, I’m wrong. Yesterday, there was that man playing piano. Do I write now with a plug in each ear? No.

The hour is 10:17, morning. Why should I have to measure the time exactly? I just left a Zoom meeting, those virtual ones with figments of humanity onscreen. I don’t mean to be negative. I only wish to eat. I wish to eat.

The more I think, these days I’ve realized why the people of my state are so fat. My father wakes at 5AM. Then he leaves for work at 6:30. The drive’s a half hour if you’re lucky. He arrives at 7, but only on a good day. Without me joining him on the express, he gets to work at 8 jammed in traffic. Then he sits till 4PM or later, and gets home at or 6 or 7.

For every year of school before this one, I lived on campus. I always had time to move, to exercise, to meditate. This year, I live at home, with my father, my family, who against the spirit of the age holds together. My hours now, are his hours, that of wages, of salaries.

School for me back then was another reality. What my father lives now, what I’m being trained to live, such things can’t be of help for any pursuit of happiness, but he has his family. His children: me, my brother, my sister, we are his hope. Men like him have families. They have hope.

I hunger and I thirst, still. In the previous years, when I lived in Grand Marc, those apartments next to the University, I could wake at 5, have my morning exercise, a full breakfast, and tea. Today, I had to scramble six eggs, ball some rice, burn my tongue on tea, and leave. I left with Dad who didn’t eat anything, and on the drive to the capital where my school was and his work was he talked to me to keep himself awake.

“They finally opened the road.”

“Yea.”

“Good thing they opened the Express. We can go all the way.”

“Hmm.”

“There’s no traffic. Usually, there’s more.”

“Yea.”

Thinking back, it’s a shame. A lot of kids don’t have Dads. A lot don’t have Dads who tried (I am still, trying to think of something to write). My Dad tried to raise a successful man. He was kind, just, and as patient as any man could be having grown up in a home where his dad drank. He worked two jobs. Then he worked one, and was always in debt to credit cards and the mortgage so I could live in a neighborhood without crime.

Then there’s me, his son who has said a lot of mean things about him in the mind. I don’t any longer, but though I’ve blamed him, I think now I’ve only myself to blame. The shame is how my father was endowed with a bitter son who should’ve offered more to him than debt and scars from a heavy fan. Granted, about the fan, I was a kid then who played Counterstrike to escape pains which were relatively light to his, but what son can live his father’s childhood? Yea Dad, I had it better than you. I know I’m spoiled. I am, and so was every son whose dads were orphans.

This is far too depressing. Can’t help but feel if earth was a show for angels, that someone’s guardian angel might be commenting on the stream that Marc’s life’s actually much better than he perceives. Marc has a job with high-income potential lined up. Marc has his health. Marc can lower his debt. Marc has glasses so he can see and if Marc ever wants to write that book about a nearsighted bloke surviving in a post-apocalypse he can. The gib’s that Marc’s sitting in the basement of a library writing a short book to complete a November challenge.

Yea, now that I think of it. My life is good. I make it hard by choice. I make note of my father’s life, because I’ve finally learned what it’s like. I am happy I have a dad who prays I don’t end as him. A man shouldn’t have to sacrifice his love for art or health to raise his kids in a crimeless neighborhood, but my father did because this world is evil, because man may only live to love by giving it his all.

And if what he says is true. If I am “smart,” then I’m sure the smart version of himself should be smart enough to live the fool for God, wiser than Solomon. From rich to poor to poor to rich, except this time we won’t get robbed. We’ll neither be too rich or poor.

Here, I have a class in two minutes. I’ll be back to write some more. Real life’s such a bore. To write of it’s a chore. I ought to make some friends with whom I can talk of anything. A corporation is a cooperation, but in business run by lords of flies these merchants don’t cooperate. They punch each other’s eyes.

Scratch this, I’m not going to class. I’ll have the homework done by A.I., and as for this diary. Marc, who you think I am? As if I’d leave the details of my life to a human in disguise. At worst, I’d leave it to a scribe. Wait, hold on—

Today felt like a mix of productivity and reflection. I made headway in the final stretch toward graduation, tying up loose ends in my Marketing program and reviewing my progress. The realization that December is so close both excites and unnerves me. The years have passed quickly, but I feel ready for what's next—ready to apply what I've learned and perhaps find new ways to express it.

I spent some time working on A Tale of Babel and revisiting a few verses, tweaking words here and there to capture the right feeling. My focus today was on bringing out the character’s sense of separation—not just from others but within himself. I find the work more challenging and rewarding the closer I get to finishing it, like trying to refine a rough but precious stone. It reminds me how much I want this writing to reach those who might feel the same, even if they’re strangers on a basket-weaving forum.

I also spent a moment looking at A Pensive Puss again. There’s something grounding about that painting, with Wain's melancholy yet somehow comforting brushstrokes reminding me of my own work’s themes—sad beginnings, yes, but a hope for happy endings.

Those freaken-fricks. Those—know what? I’m done. If I ever get flagged enough for being important enough for assassination, guess I’ll die. I literally asked this computer, “Make a diary entry for today about what I did.” What permission did I give for you to scan all my tabs! Then on the left, my entries, only one of them … okay it must have drew the information from that entry about A Tale of Babel, but how did they know about my Marketing Program? Blasts, Chat can’t even do my homework so now I’ll have to do it myself.

***

I figured out how to get Chat to do it. Now, to harangue this spyware. If people already know who I am, then there’s no point hiding who I am. This is an online journal to begin with, so whatever name I use should only obscure identities to prevent scandal.

I’m not making any sense to myself now, aren’t I? I’m typing at the edge of my seat. Whatever I say, I can mean what I really mean. I don’t have to walk on eggshells, I can just write what I wish to write and let death or life fall so long as when I die I can be assured to rise to that eternal life.

But it’s twelve. It’s my lunch hour, so I should get up, eat, and live my life outside these screens that I may return again and write a thing which could bring life to … maybe not this world, but at least myself.

Men today live meaningless lives. Not my father, who was an alien born in Lao in time of yore when kings from GOD ruled the earth. Not my father, whose hope lives through his son who came from God, but of men born to societies that no longer dream.

When I speak of men, I speak of men born without a dream to principalities, Presidents evolved from dogs, and women who’ve killed brother and sister before they were even born. I speak of men in the archaic, the real definition, which speaks of man as man and the woman all made to walk the heavens and the earth.

These men, men today live meaningless lives, but didn’t always. Once upon a time, they did live worthy lives. Not even upon a time, actually. Now, they still do. Where men still dream, they still do. But America no longer dreams, so the American lives without meaning.

But there’s another point to argue. Dream of what? Heaven. The dream has to start with a virtuous end and—

I’ve rambled a lot about a thing that doesn’t matter, yea? Fear God, I’d leave it at that, but I realize the concept of this diary of mine falls apart because by even trying to fear God I put myself outside the average in this America that never sleeps. Maybe I could use verse to collect myself. Not true verse, but post-it-note prose which moderns disguise as poems.

King of Kings

King of Presidents

In the Scriptures, where’s the Second?

You know, friend, for someone’s who a Protestant

You’re faith’s placed lots outside the Script.

So Samuel was a Judge.

Samuel appointed a King of which

By his second son all Israel knew peace.

And a Judge’s a judge and a President’s a dent.

Guess kings are kings no matter the name,

But between kings of eight years or all years

Why even Samuel as Judge ruled until his death!

What do you call a King who rules for eight years?

The greatest man in the world.

WASHINGTON!

So what is it then? What makes a man worthy to be King?

Why, I just don’t know!

It’s been so long since a king feared God.

What can we say of the new one?

Uh-huh, uh-huh. Well I think it’d be fun if his son were king.

For President? No! For life! His name is Baron

And he’s tall as Washington.

But his dad’s a degen while Washington feared God.

Well let’s quit talking about his title!

Let’s talk about what made Washington a man.

Well he had a plan.

Yea? I forget what it was calling.

Something about Neutra—the Neutrality Pact!

Yea, I remember that. There were some other things too.

Peace with all nations. Low military spending.

The colonies were just a bloc of merchants, weren’t they?

A third stood with Britain, a third didn’t care, a third with Washington.

Yet Washington got the third that didn’t care to care,

And the third with Britain out to Canada.

Is it so much to ask to a man of God for king!

The public would have to fear God, that’s the thing!

Well can they fear God if Christians who are gods

Are not fearful at all?

Pray tell.

Well I’ve—

I’m talking to myself. Guess I’ll go with it.

(Guardian Angel, help)

Well I can’t speak of the things Christians do in private.

Maybe it’d be best to keep the subject polite.

Right.

Okay, I say, Christians aren’t scary.

Go on.

God is scary, isn’t He?

Yea.

So why can’t those who pray to be His image be?

I fear—respect—Him because He rules my life.

Everything He does is for my good, but those, these words

Lauded by many preachers are just that, words.

Doesn’t David fear? Solomon? Elijah? Jesus?

Even God fears God, and God (Jesus) who fears God,

I love Him and I fear Him because there’s much to fear.

Excuse me, these lines don’t make much sense.

I love the God who rained fire over Sodom.

Yes.

I love the God who flooded the whole Earth.

I love the God who torched the priests of Baal.

I love the God who fell Jericho’s walls.

Yes.

I love the God who died and lived for the whole world.

Yes.

But what happened to Jerusalem after the Blood and Water spilled!

Jerusalem was taken, the temple was destroyed and—

Many souls were saved.

Put your hate away.

You will do what God would will

And pay through your life until

The last flint of sin is paid

So to heaven you’ll be raised.

Why do you care if parent or people give thee praise?

Suffer debt, suffer pain, even your middling sight for heaven’s sake.

It’s the least a soul like you should do,

For the wrong you’ve done in all your days.

And besides, when I count the grace,

People more noble than yourself suffer worser fates.

In the same wood pews, where you prattled rosaries away

(For which by grace our Mother takes)

There are children that see white, children without sight,

Men who have done nothing wrong who can’t lift a foot to walk.

And here you, Marc, sit in a cushioned leather chair,

In the basement of an archive filled, writing of

The suffering of man as if God let Hell give you all hell could!

I’m sure if you could really hear, I may wish to say,

For a baby born on Thanksgiving day it’s ironic you complain!

But maybe He’d forgive, since you’ve known no one’s life but yours.

There are those who have better lots than yours.

Parents who have stayed together and knew to bless rather than curse.

But look at all your neighbors, over half have lost their father.

I feel that I should eat.

You should learn to love your neighbor.

How?

Do your job and serve.

III
11/15/24, Friday : Speech to Text Adventures

Ok I'm trying something new because I get tired of standing. I mean I get tired of sitting on my chair each day every day ever since I was a boy. My glasses are off. None of you will see it but in between each period, I pause in my speech. Yea, I no longer care if anyone has a VPN well that's nothing more than a honeypot. The NSA, those guys know who everybody is and at this point in time I no longer care too much about being a private figure. Of course all things considered I won't put anyone into scandal here in these notes. Oh, ok so the speech function doesn't track your periods let me fix this.

Auto punctuation on. It put the period down. Good. Now as I was saying, I mean, every journalist puts their real name on their article. Of course. Having grown up in the early 2000s, I guess our teachers were trying to prepare us to be super cyberpunk. Unfortunately, people don't really never, they don't, they don't use avatars. Whoever you are is whoever you are. And I guess you only get a moniker to your author's name if you're cool, like Plato. Where if you get good enough at wrestling people just assign your stage name to all of your works. And given the nature of this diary being online, it's just. Yeah, Mark is gonna be who Mark is, and everyone else who are real people will be who they are just with their names changed in the classic, newsworthy sense. See, it's actually quite difficult to write in this way because I never had much practice speaking in a way that mattered too much to me. In the chair, it's crunched down, breaking down on my lungs, gravity compressed. But here I can stand and yap. Yea, to my computer, which from what I can guess probably isn't even doing the punctuation right. But I'll go back and fix it like now.

Turns out there wasn't much to fix. When the period really is placed, that's just me being silent, stalling for time. I was going to write about my day. And this is all terrible, terribly mellow and—it's weird for me because my room isn't soundproof so I can't speak too loudly or too quietly. Maybe a work of this kind will become a cult classic later on. And the best part is, is that I don't have to wear my glasses or look at that cursed screen in the right. I can just walk around my room and have technology track everything I say. And now, finally, for once, I have to work on my ability to tell stories like a real man and not a nerd who just sits in the chair all day typing away like a monkey to his screen. And no one here will ever see the—what do you call them? The movements of my body that I use while I speak. But you'll know it's there because I told you so. And because, being unfortunately literate, you'll have read it so. And I consider this a great exercise for myself. Because they're two. Once there was a senator. I forgot his name, but he was talked about in Parallel Lives by Plutarch. And he was a terrible speaker like myself. But that didn't get him down. No, the Speaker of the House had to speak because it was his duty to speak. And so, being bad at speaking, he actually went on a training arc. So that he could speak better, he would speak with pebbles in his mouth and he would take a mile run every day to increase the size of his lungs. And pray tell, the paragraphs are actually getting pretty long. Such things are out of fashion. These today's days and—

Wow, you know how is anyone supposed to read this? Bottom line is. I guess I'm doing this because. I don't really have any fears about getting tracked down or about whether or not I can escape the government's eyes. This country is a surveillance state. And truly. If any criminal did want to commit a crime and get away with it, they'd either be hired by the feds. Or, well, I guess they'd get away with it. Because there's only a very few specific things a person can do to commit crime. And none of those things leave you with any good outcomes, even if you do get away with it.

You know what? I'm losing myself. This is a record of what it's like to live. Today, writing like this, I realize the audio logs trope from all the games I played when I was a boy isn't actually too far off. People, they don't always have the luxury of pens and paper. It's only now in this myopic society that everyone can read and write. But it's in speech and diction, this voice that people were truly meant to read. The Iliad, that book, was originally a story meant to be heard and played on stage. If a storyteller can't even tell his tale by mouth, by word, he cannot be considered the author of anything. And what was it that created the heavens and the earth? Was it the script? No, it was the word which was spoken. Let there be light.

So, I'll summarize now. Here's what I did today. I woke up at the hour of 7:00. Wait, scratch that, I woke up at 7:30. And I stretched my back in bed until it was 8. I showered, brushed my teeth. You know what? I'm just gonna skip the morning routine. I did my laundry. No, I didn't do laundry. I was just ironing clothes which I haven't ironed over the past week. See, this is how you know that you're poorer than your grandfathers who came before. The hard work of ironing could have been paid to a maid. I could have had a maid 60 years ago do that work. Now I have to do it myself or wear some cheap polyester clothes that don't wrinkle. Yea, I had to iron those clothes. It was boring. No good for any adventure.

Excuse my meandering speech. Have this terrible trouble. Nothing interesting happened in my day. I guess I might’ve psyopped myself with thoughts about traditional Chinese medicine. I have no idea why that works, but I want no part of it because I want my religion to be pure. Yeah, I'd like to take, eat, drink some funky plants to straighten my back. But I won't speak or believe in things such as universal energy or chi. And granted, I'm pretty sure chi’s just a neutral term to describe bundles of nerves, but I've read the Yellow Emperor's book. There's a lot of strange philosophies of man mixed in; even with stances which I formerly used to strengthen myself. On a brighter note, in my backyard I did figure it out from Saint Dominic through his poses a way of exercising that is pleasing to my God. With the help of photographs, drawings by Peter Henry Ling. I'll have some help with that too.

Now do I have it in me to describe my habits of prayer? Maybe, maybe. Today I fasted on bread and water. I've been doing it for what feels like so long now that I no longer hunger or thirst. Or maybe the hunger and thirsting is of a different kind. A hunger and thirst for change. The hunger that people would quit pretending that things are fine. I hunger for the America of 1765. The America that dreams. That America who after throwing off a king, tried to install a German king. That baby of a state who after failing to install that king, took a general without any rizz to sit on the throne. My Lord, I'm no longer making any sense.

To myself. I could drawl on and on and on and why doesn't everyone write this way? With technology you could get a draft easy on your book. See, if authors today had any real talent of storytelling, they’d just speech to text their entire story, their entire Iliad, and have it done in a day. But they can’t, which is why most authors fail. Because most authors by Sturgeon's laws were never storytellers to begin with. The authors that succeed are those who can give a speech (postscript—remember Moses, dummy?). And I know there's an obvious joke about certain men I can make, but I won't. I only recommend that these people open a book and look at how their favorite authors spoke. The most unintelligent ones are the ones who could only write but never tell.

So I guess. My life is so uninteresting. All I did this Friday was iron clothes and go to church and pray a bit for mercy on my soul. I will have a go at telling the beginning of a story I'm thinking about. It's not very good. It doesn't even exist in real life. Nonetheless. We believe that any story that can be told from beginning to end without the assistance of ink on a piece of paper will be a story worth publishing. So here we go:

[REDACTED]

And yeah. I haven't gotten any further than this. I have ideas spinning around in my head, but I still come across the same problem of fantasia. I don't wanna write to escape from this world. I want to use tales to illustrate—to right with an “r,” the world.

But I doubt I can. And I probably won't. That work. That's the work that only God can do. As for his Saints? We can only pray. I forget with what fire I was to speak with. What speech I was to give.

No one will see it. They’ll know when they read it. Silence too long for a speech just passed. Who am I? What was I made to do? I guess I got a reply back for one of the jobs I applied for. But it's been so long that I forgot the company's name. When I saw it the mail in my inbox, I could only ask. Who? Who the heck is Lerner Publishing Co? Right, yea, it's like I guess it's great if I could work for a publishing company, but I actually—for something like this, I'd actually prefer the full-time opportunity at the Knights of Columbus. At least being a salesman, I gained more valuable experience in marketing than just pushing pencils for a womanly publishing company. In fact, why are so many HR managers women? Everything today is always decided by a girl. It must suck for them. Uh, look, does anyone else think that the Barbie movie was unironically? No, it's—it's, I don't know what to say about the Barbie movie because, because, because, because I—what can I say about this movie? Well, I guess I can say whatever I want about it. The government might already know who I am and if I die—then—well, I guess my parents should know that me being Catholic, there was no suicide. It could be an accident, but it’ll never be a suicide because I probably fear hell more than most people. It's ridiculous too, because I haven't even killed a man, I just—well, I won't get into it.

So I'll just be blunt about the Barbie movie. The Kens could have easily taken over Barbie land if they just decided to rape the Barbies … Oh, so the diction does allow me to write my ... I mean I meant the I guess if I say ... it just puts the ellipse right there.

Back to the topic. I didn't want to kill my sister’s, my little sister's dreams, as we were walking out of the theater, but I just don't understand why nobody else could have came to this conclusion. Mother of God, help us, help me, because a man seeking to be like Saint Joseph shouldn't even speak about such things. It's just, looking at it from this perspective, one has to wonder why half the population takes orders from people they could easily kill. It's not even an if. It's more of a when. World War 3 is going to start. I'm in prime drafting age. And one of these days there's going to be a vote for war where half the population in this country who can't even be conscripted will vote to send the other half off to defend. Defend what? What will I be drafted to defend? The people who sent me away? See, I need to make a new paragraph.

When society is ruled by men, ok, it'd be better for me if it was just a tyrant king. A man who, against my will, just sent me off because I can just blame him. But when half the population who God made man to love is willing to send you off to just defend them? That's a different story. If this Republic was governed by conscriptable men, I'd pray, and I'd guess that none of us would want to go to war at all. If the Republic was governed by a king, this king would want to go to—excuse me, this king being absolute in its authority theoretically could go to war with anyone he wants and we'd have no say in it.

And where am I getting at here? There's a saying my body, my choice. It doesn't line with reality. At no point in history did anybody ever belong to themselves. When the pharaoh of Egypt tells you to march, you march. When Uncle Sam picks you up to go overseas to fight for oil. You march. And the question of every Republic on who should decide the lives of others. It ends with the question of who has the most stake in the success of the Republic.

I am confusing my very self. I just want to get back to this point. I don't know why people who won't be dying in the next war. Should ever be allowed to tell me or vote me into death. I have my duties as a Christian to do what God would will. Maybe this is what how the Russians felt. It's no wonder they beat their wives. Oh, I guess I understand now. For that woman voted that 16 year old boy away to the front lines. When he comes back a man he knows to put the woman in line. Well, it's been a long time since America has seen a conscripted war. When that time comes, I suspect that we should live in America that prefers the law of God than the law of popular votes, but one can only dream that this country will be given to hands that are wise and kind. For now, it seems that they'll be ruled by woman.

This dialogue is terrible. This has to be the most skippable chapter in the diary. Well, what? How? Just there—there's nothing good to say. Nothing happened on this day. I just prayed because Friday; it's a fasting day. Though what kind of prayers can I say right now? The fool prattles on and on and on because even if I'm just speaking alone to myself I want someone to hear. Maybe I just want someone to know my pains, and for a long time I thought that would have been a woman. But even in the adoration chamber, when there's someone else around, I, I can't just yell and talk about, you know, what I wished for God to do to this world and to the people around me. And trust me, it's not all bad. Because I mean, for some reason when it comes to socialization, look, I tell you, people are just bad at socializing. People in my age group, but when you talk to older guys, you know, these old farts with wrinkled brows and who will like chew on a cookie and like, they don't even care. They're just like that Chad, because they already have their wives. They already have their family. They can chew on a cookie and let the crumbs spill on their jacket because they're that much of a boss and you're staying there as a younger man so realizing that the generation you're part of just really sucks they don't it's like the only thing they. Maybe, maybe they know they suck. Maybe we know we suck compared to the people who came before. Like we didn't fight in any war there. There has been no Vietnam for us to kill off our competition in the job market before we came back home. I mean, yeah, hey, I guess if you went to college during the Vietnam years, you won't have to worry about the competition. Because they're either dead or have PTSD.

An excuse me, I'm ranting off again. I just. Sometimes I don't know how to appreciate things. I just. I overthink. I wonder why these older guys want to, you know, be around someone like me.

Ever since I was a boy, I was raised so long to just use people as an end, a means to an end, that I guess I just don't know how it feels like to just, hang out with a person for the sake of hanging out with a person.

And there's someone in my life outside of church who still knows that feeling. I just don't. It was. Whatever that feeling that children have to gather together with people they don't know. That's been trained out of me.

And even now, with the private avatar, the fake name, the username that I use online, that's still a symptom, part of the disease which was inoculated into my soul.

I mean, yeah, it's, it's in my nature, it's in my natural instinct to just look at, you know, normal people on social media and, you know, seethe over how they use their real names, but honestly, wouldn't it be great if people could just be themselves, you know, wherever they were, online, offline. You know what I mean?

Like what if your online identity was just you? And what if your identity offline was just you? What if people could be as genuine as a Catholic peasant who doesn't think of his clothes, doesn't think of himself, who does nothing more than love his God and neighbor?

And look at how terrible I am alluding to my friends, my old, my old friends, these old chaps as peasants when they make more money than me. I only say they’re; I only give them the label because they're, they strike me as happy in their simple lives.

I mean, is there shame in being poor? Should there be shame in working at a job like McDonald's? I mean, couldn't someone make a living just seating people at tables? Wouldn’t it be great if that person were able to live a worthy life?

But they can't, because every solution that we all know politically doesn't pan out the way they wish. It's always raise the minimum wage or give more welfare. Wouldn't it be great if $15.00 an hour could actually buy you a house?

It used to. Yeah, I guess it did when wars killed off most of the working population. But uh, go further back than that. I mean, it used to even before the wars.

How long have I been talking? I've been talking for too long. An hour and a half. I've just been talking about nothing at all. And I'll have to go back and review this page to see if there's any grammar errors.

Ohh, Mama Christy, sanctification dummy. Corpus Christi. Kiss. My pronunciation is too bad for that.

Ohh, Nima Christy, sensitive kid. Me. Or this Christie so me saying goes crazy. Hey bro man. Ohh water of Christ side wash out my stains.

Ok, well, I guess it didn't pick it up. I think I'm fine now. Maybe I should do this more often? At the very least where I can get better practice telling stories about my day. What kind of story would heaven tell about it now?

Once Upon a time, there was a man named Mark. He woke up. Mark prayed. Mark got confused in the morning about some Pagan rituals from China. Ultimately, he decided to put an end to it. After looking through various articles of No One Mourns. From priests who did karate and such and other forms of strange things. Then Mark had his bread and Mark had his water, for he was fasting on this day. Then Mark spent some, uh, I mean wasted some time on YouTube. Outside Marks played with those dogs. Mark did some exercise.

Then Mark ironed his clothes for an hour. At the lunch hour when people were eating lunch. Then Marc signed up to fill in for his neighbor at Adoration. He didn't know ohh why she had to skip, But Mark saw that it was at 4:00 in the afternoon and that this would be the only time when the most convenient time for him to actually play. Into his role as a substitute adorer, which was a role given to people who didn't have regular adoring hours, and there was a role that Mark signed up for, which he often skipped because he adored regularly anyways. So, seeing an opportunity to put himself to use on behalf of his neighbor, Mark signed up and he went to pray in the Chapel in the Adoration Chapel in the Quiet Place after he finished ironing his clothes.

He spent an hour alone with the Lord. And though he didn't remember too much about what he gained from hit, in his mind, the soul was affected. His character was trained and he will keep the grace forever. Mark drove home, and he came home in the dark. There was also a man who came into the Chapel and saw him off before he did this. But that man came in. Mark felt a bit nervous, but he remembered to wave a hello. Back to getting home. After Mark came home, he had a bit more bread, a bit more water, and then he started to write.

Then Mark, wishing for someone to hear, rambled off quite a bit, not knowing what to say. For what to write? Ohh no. What do you mean to say? Well, Mark used a voice application to track his speech because he was smart and realized no book would ever be worth anything if it couldn't be told. So Mark rambled. About a great many things. And Mark realized the mic was spelling his name wrong the whole time!

Mark with a C. If this computer was spying on me, it should have caught that. Ohh, but I guess they can't catch my like summation points my exclamation marks, can it? And why does it keep spelling OHH with two hs?

One of these days we'll be books shelves filled with books are written just like this on a mic, text to speech app and whenever a critic or says that they didn't enjoy a section written in this part, the. People will say filtered.

The mic can't even do quotations.

IV
11/16/24, Saturday : The McDonald Revolutionaries

I have to apologize for yesterday's entry. I promise that chapter will be the least readable chapter in this log. Sometimes I wonder whether I'd get doxed. Guess I no longer care. When it comes to authors anyways I know where they live, when they get published or through the little details they tell through their tales. It's like, oh, JRR Tolkien lives in London and Jeff Kinney lives in Vancouver. Can an author who lives in Springtown get any peace?

The most I can say is that I live on a street on very promising property somewhat close to downtown within walking distance. Unlike the newer folks moving in I’m part of the old chaps who moved in before the recession of 2008 who got stake out houses next to the city’s historical districts. In a sense, I guess that made my family pioneers of some kind. Doesn't feel like it though, since we're still paying off the house.

I remember growing up and seeing all the friends I knew move away because all our neighbors—because of the banks—yea, the banks gave out loans they knew people couldn't pay, so everyone I knew moved away. Then they were replaced by people who I suppose I got too old to know. Let's see, I grew up in that stranger danger generation, living in this suburb, I don't know any of my neighbors.

But there was one who stayed, the sons of an Air Force Seargent of some kind. We used to be good friends, but I burned that bridge. They cheated in a game and I kicked both brothers in the balls and took off. I should probably make up with them, be friends with them one of these days. It's kind of hard because I don't know what their most critical memory of me was.

Now, let me tuck in my shirt. Let me pace a bit around this little room. Some days I don't know what to write about. This is just one of those days. I could speak about what I'm most passionate about. But then I’d have to admit to myself, I'm crazed. I might be a murderer by heart, someone like Cain.

Today. I actually had a fine day. Went to church in the morning, gargled a confession, then ate the nearest McDonald's with a group of guys. Now these men, they were all 20 years my senior, or older. They were a jolly bunch with the wrinkles coming on. I may have been the only smoothed-face one amidst them all. None of us ordered any food, just coffee, and we sat at a little square table in the back talking politics. Me, I kept my mouth shut, but I was happy to sit down and listen as the youngest member of the group because to me it felt like I was looking at the last remnant of any kind of American revolutionary.

See, I'm an alien who learned how to be an American through television. Also through books. A wonderful catalog of classic books. What's more, I am unique in history and that I was taught history from a wonderful channel called Extra Credits. Now it's run by the communists or those close to communists, which they are called socialists, but it used to be run by a wonderful man whose name I forgot. I believe his name was Ed and his cartoon character wore a green shirt.

I got to learn how our founders met in little bars and coffee shops, how they discussed the issues of their day, brother to brother, in person, intimately, with connection. Growing up as a boy, for the longest time I thought such things were a myth or fantasy. Did people really get together to talk about how to solve the issues of our day? Maybe the communists did, the socialists. I know what they do, but what about people like me who wanted so badly to believe in patriotic spits?

I was happy to sit with these men. I was happy because they reminded me that even if the spirit of 1776 was not in the younger generation, it still existed in the old who would still wish to pass it on to someone of my ilk.

You know, I find it so hard to type sometimes because it feels like there's rocks in my back. I push through. Anyways, after having that revolutionary talk for the week—I do that every Saturday—after that I went home and I ate. My sister was trying to bake a cake. Me and my dad just hated on her the entire time. We ran her bakery skills as a bit of a joke. She might have been hurt. Either way, she pushed through and managed to get the cake done. The logistics into making this cake? It was a lot of edible glitter, a lot of diarrhea … for some reason she wrote the text in dots. I just chewed spinach the entire time like Popeye. Nothing of note happened after that except that I went out onto an empty deck and exercised in the backyard. Also, I guess I helped move furniture down into the basement: some chairs, some couches. Maybe that's why my back hurts right now, and say, while I was exercising I was listening to a podcast; something one of the men I talked with at Mcdonald’s sent me. His name was Cal, a tall man up in years with dark hair and eyes. He sent me—being a Knight of Columbus—a talk from the Drew Mariani show on Relevant Radio. There, my Grand Knight, no, was it Grand Knight? I forget the title but he was the top guy of the order. Patrick R. Kelly was speaking about—excuse me, I listened to that podcast while I exercised and got my fresh air.

Patrick Kelly, the Grand Knight of Grand Knights of the Knights of Columbus; he was talking of a masculinity crisis men face today. They suffer from loneliness. That was what he primarily spoke of, and I guess two years ago I could have related. It's difficult for people to connect. It's strange growing up. I was told I wouldn't have my high school friends. Turns out high school friends are all I have.

I mean, they were all I had for a long time until I joined the Knights, or rather, until I decided to get involved at church.

It's at this point I have to apologize for there being no story. When it comes to it, I'll be sure to recompile an abridged version of this work. Yea Marc, guess that's how you know you graduated from business school. Value proposition: you can get the unabridged version of Diary of a Common Man. You can also get the abridged version. It's basically like Romance of the Three Kingdoms. One book is the historical record while the other is something you’d actually want to read. And look, since there's nothing else that happened today I'll make an attempt to tell an actual story. I'm thinking … I can't. There's no place for it here. Pray, keeping a diary feels like a feminine trait. Suppose it is, depending on how you use it, or it can only be considered manly if you call it a journal.

In the basement of the Wilson Library I found a lot of journals written by colonists, people who colonize—the British—describing what they saw in India and other parts of the world. Trust me, it's a lot like this thing I'm making. Very boring. Like the title will be something exciting like In the Palace of an Indian Prince but then the real details of the story would be, well, “I saw a skunk and it died.”

That's ridiculous, but they're kept in libraries because they have historical significance. The news can yap about whatever they want; about what reality was like back then, but the truth? Kept in archives for noble souls to receive! And that's the beauty of libraries. That's the beauty of free speech. Because for people who know he privilege they have, they can be grateful they can be above the rest of those below who are ungrateful, who waste their literacy on pop news. They can go to a library and read from sources first hand. They can know how much better it was for people to live back then. It wasn't all bad being a colony. To receive Christianity from noble hands, from saints, whether they come from France or England. To receive God is a greater gift than … yea, in this post-Christian world colonialism is only evil. It's considered evil in this world ruled by Satan because it brought Christ to the Barbarians.

And yea, I say barbarian because there's no shame in being one. You'd be fortunate to be a barbarian today. If you still believe in heaven and hell then you do better than most in so-called civilization.

I'm gonna let out a hint. I've fixed—I'm going to fix all the grammar and all the spelling after I'm done. I'm making this part of the book with a speech to text modulator again.

See, there's a problem in school with how speeches are done. They don't reflect reality. Dictators can give great speeches with pause … very long silences … in between … like what I'm doing right … now. The reason being is because they know they can kill everyone in the room.

But when you throw a student up there and you're grading him on speech, he stutters and he stammers because he knows that his professor is the one who decides whether he gets a C or an A. Imagine now if the student had a sword and he could kill his professor for giving him a C or a D. Then that student may speak as fluently as he would wish. His speech would be excellent because he knows that he can talk however he likes and people will have to like it whether they want to or not. When you listen to great speeches in this world, there's no method to it. There’s only power. They know they don't have to persuade because they know what they can persuade through other ways.

Then I suppose there's the priest. Now these men, these are people who can speak. These are of a different class. Not a civilian like myself. They speak and they have God behind them, so you listen. There's a Bishop who I like, Venerable Fulton Sheen. He can speak because he believes! Guess that's the hardest part about speaking in the academic setting. It's difficult for people to believe in what they're saying. This brings me back. Today, I had to work on an assignment for U.S. bank. This thing wants US students to explain to them how they may best engage their employees in charity. It's not in large print. It's in the fine print.

When they were asking us to give them ideas, they told us to “increase participation in the charities they ran.” We had to figure out by ourselves that they just wanted to know how to get their employees engaged at work.

Now I don't know if they're stupid or … no, they're not stupid. It's just difficult because they know who they are. They’re a bank, and banks can't be trusted, ever.

If it happens that a bank gets robbed, no employee is going to die or chase after a robber. Of course, that's not what they're talking about. They just want to know how to get people to do their work for the pay they give them.

Look, the point is, sometimes I feel I'd rather rob this bank than help them engage their employees into something that they only do to live.

It's an unfortunate thing in this country, the company, the corporation tries to take the place of some kind of parental or familial need.

The company doesn't have to be a person's entire life! It's ok for someone to just clock in, do their work, and clock out, but apparently that's not enough for some companies now.

They want to pay you a $47,000 … $70,000 salary, and they want you to be happy. That’s most people who work there, and then there’s upper management making $100,000 plus a year wondering why most refrain from running the extra mile.

But, here's the thing, I did speak with a U.S. bank employee who did do a little extra for me. I called him past closing hours. On the other end of the phone he said some obscenities. Then, know what he did? He did his job anyways. He took my call. He did what I told him to do, but verily, he was just a teller getting paid 50K … in an economy where doctors, lawyers, and engineers transforming into “middle-class” professions.

This man … probably … will not get a raise—and then there are these guys asking me how to get their employees engaged. This I say … it is not the Son of God who speaks, but the son of Cain. God will put every thought and every action into judgment. Those who rule at the top, these will be judged with greater judgment. For the servant does not know as much. Yea, it is said that must keep his own soul. It's true. Nonetheless, those who rule keep the souls of those they rule. If a priest tells one to sin, the sin is on him; not the poor soul who listened.

Every teacher, every ruler, has the greater judgement. Dear Bank, it’s only been sixteen years since 2008. To rob the nation, and then your own? Worry about the Hell to pay.

Is it too much to ask what people want to be engaged? Does U.S. Bank not ask because they’ll know they’ll ask for higher pay? Oh God! Studies! The studies! The studies claim money doesn’t increase an employee’s willingness to wage! The lies of Academia! No conflict of interest, how can these people claim!

My father worked two jobs because he had bills to pay! If one job paid enough, he’d be engaged to work one job! But two jobs, he was engaged, because he had to work to live!

Pay people … less … pay them nothing … but make them work to live. To not work should mean death. With terms like this, they will work. Right now they do, but I guess engagement like this doesn’t show well as a stat.

V
11/18/24, Monday : I am Turkey

Just came to me, I may be a turkey. Thanksgiving’s a conspicuous birthday. The character of gratitude, backstabbing, and turkey—did God plan since the beginning to infuse my soul with these?

Yea, it’s true. There is a hobble to my step. My clothes are colorful. I gobble. My gait betrays a character both determined and confused, determinedly confused. Last Saturday, at mass, I almost stepped to the layman to receive Him, but from the neck twisted my way to stand before Father Mill. Then I received, and returned to my pew, gliding across the carpet with a posture seesawing between yes, a cock, and an iron bar.

Liberals are not the special snowflake. I am! I am the flake, and it’s, just why? To contemplate my birth under heaven’s eye, why did God need a man to have been born on November 28^th, on Thanksgiving Day in the States? What’s more, an alien! I can’t. Should the alien born on Thanksgiving Day, replace? No, not replace. To replace is the history of lies. To conquer with truth’s more true to life. But, I’m Catholic. It’s not of God to genocide like the Prots. The truth’s meant to revive. The America in Spanish hands; when I traveled to Mexico I saw the Aztecs Christianized. Living in Dakota county, I see Christian whites only. Worse, they grow more pagan by the year.

Should a God-fearing man born on Thanksgiving Day replace? No. Where was I going with this? Oh, right, like a turkey. Day to day, this instinct of self-consciousness? Turkeys are not self-conscious, but I am as man. With God there are no coincidences. Was I always meant to be like this?

***

The hour is 1:25 PM. Right now, I’m sitting in the computer lab spying on my Professor, Bob. Bob teaches sales. He is a portly man, and he’s told me he isn’t actually a Professor, something like an Adjunct and—Bob left. He passed by me without waving a hello. Guess I deserved it. I didn’t wave to him the first time I saw him preparing his presentation in the lab. I also wasn’t confident enough to raise my hand above this computer.

I am ruminating on whether I should share more details about my day. I rose at 7, took a bus with my brother into the capital at 8, we arrived at 8:30, leaving him behind I took a forty minute walk cross the west bank to east to back, participated in a lecture relating to HR; the topic being fair compensation—ah, the most interesting part thus far starts here. I’ll relate.

At the hour of 11:05, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a lecture given by my Human Resources Professor, Matt.

***

The hour is 3:43 PM. I’m in Coffman, now. Know what? I’ll use European time from now on. The hour is 15:43. I’ve got 20 minutes.

As I was saying, my Human Resources Professor, Matt, who was a tall, spindly man of whom a peer of mine described as a “twink” and who I’d describe as well, “tall, spindly,” with kind brown eyes to add, offered a lecture on the topic of “fair compensation.” He paced the room in a blue sweater and dark jeans, then after talking a bit about wages, he brought up the example of the WNBA and NBA. In sum, the two leagues wrote a deal which allotted the NBA, the men’s league, a revenue 35 times greater than the WNBA, the women’s.

The class discussion was fine. Everyone acknowledged that people were paid what they were worth in terms of entertainment. Maybe this would surprise a reader, but business schools are pockets conservative civilization at colleges. We could agree that Caitlin Clark, the white, marketable basketball player known for being relatable to the majority of young women in the U.S.A. probably got what she deserved for being the best in the league. Nonetheless What interests me most to record was the conversation with my seatmate, Matt, who was a student, named the same as our Professor who was also skinny. Difference was his height, short, same as mine, and the beard which laid about as thick as Saint Joseph’s.

“Look man, the WNBA just—there’s a commentary, not one by Stephen Curry, but basically the girls there don’t get paid much because people don’t see them as good role models.”

“Why’s that?” said Matt.

“Over half the WNBA’s gay. They’re homosexuals, so rumors say.”

“Whoa! I think—maybe that’s a bit prejudiced. I think being gay’s fine so long as you aren’t hurting nobody.”

“Well, it’s against natural order. Most people aren’t okay with it, which is why people—look Matt, people don’t want to watch lesbians play basketball.”

I don’t—my bus is coming in five minutes. I’ll be back.

***

Disclaimer: you spend enough time living life and you don't have enough time to write about it. I'd summarize what happened over the past six hours, but I'm afraid I need to go to bed because tomorrow I have a bit of a schedule.

Morning classes, gotta drop Ma off, and then a job interview at the end of it all. Suppose the most I'll say is that I came out of a meeting with the Knights of Columbus, my council in Springtown. You know, I'm gonna go back and mix the names in this journal. I'm not doxing anyone.

Now, what I did these last hours … tried chicken liver for the first time. Tasted terrible at first, but then my body registered that I was eating something good, ergo the taste got better. I still have to pray my Rosary.

VI
11/19/24, Tuesday : When gods play Ape

The hour is 9:00. Again, I'm pacing around my room practicing my speech. I'm not so sure how this kind of training could lead to better diction. Excuse me, I lie. Truly, I am a turkey. The date of my birth, its conspicuousness does not escape me. I know the scriptures speak. They say nothing good about double minded men. Even so, I will have mercy on myself. A turkey may appear double minded but they birds always get where they need to go, which in all my years watching them buck about at the university I still don't know where. They appear starting in the fall and for the rest of the three seasons I've no idea where they go. Actually, they appear for two seasons; fall, winter, and disappear for spring and summer. Where do wild turkeys go? I don't know.

As for myself, my day was quite simple. I woke up early and I had to get to Minneapolis by 8:00. I dropped my mother off at her work along the way and I carried my little brother, Jason far enough to a train and bus stop. I didn't drive all the way to his apartment. No, because by the time I got to the capital I was already about 7 minutes late for class. My first class starts at 8:00 this day but—he tried to make me feel bad about not dropping him off at his apartment, dropping him off all the way because when I turned around after I finished paying my ticket he was off walking away. He didn't even say good bye and all I could think was, well, maybe I was a bad older brother. But hear me, this kid for two days in a row decided to just force people to pick him up at 7:00 PM when we already came home so he could sleep for a night at home in Springtown before returning to the capital. I mean, if you're going to come back from the cities, just let us know so we can leave and get you while you're we're going while we're on our way home. Don't just wait until everyone's finished eating dinner and trying to, you know, go to bed soon. And—oh you get the idea. He calls us and he tries to come home at the most inconvenient time, and nobody so far has really had the heart to tell him that we don't really want to pick him up if he's gonna be like that.

And I know it sounds mean when you put it in plain terms like that, but it's just respect. If you're going to come home, you have to stay home for more than a day. At least stay in the house or plan on staying in the house for at least 2 nights. If you just want to go from your apartment to back home, back to your apartment to back home, all the while causing us to have to pick you up when we're about to get ready for bed just so you can sleep for one night and then go back to your apartment—at that point, what are you even coming home for? To sleep? Just, you’ve ended in the apartment the next morning anyways. Sleep there!

Some people are hard to tell off. My brother Jason, he's always been a bit more extroverted, a bit more sensitive. He's a very sensitive man. He's handsome, too, so of course, him being so … delicate, so kind, it's difficult for anyone in my family save for my father to wrangle him. But oh well, he's my brother and I'll probably have to check up on him tomorrow just to see if I wasn't too rude to him about this.

This aside, it was a fair time in class. From 8:00 AM to 9:00, I had to hear a lecture about game theory. You know, sometimes there are days where I think college would actually be quite fun as an education if it weren't for the cost. My professor Volken, I don't understand how the topic of this lecture related to cultural studies, but he was right in his presentation on how life or rather all games, all wars, everything they do in business and strategy is more a game of poker than it is a game of chess.

In poker, you don't know what your opponent has, you don't know how well your own hand’s going to play in the game, and sometimes a pair of twos can beat a pair of aces. That's life.

Chess, on the other hand, has no human element to it. Poker is unfair, while chess is fair, which is why in chess the winners always win and the losers always lose. Life, on the other hand … life is life. A pair of twos can beat a pair of aces. In poker, much like life, God has his part to play in setting the river down. You’d actually have to understand poker to know what the heck I'm talking about, but yea, it's good to reminisce.

Moving on after this, it was short work on a group assignment for a class on business communications. I don't have much to say about this aside from the fact that I might have been overly passionate about dogging on U.S. bank. On my end, the dialogue was, Man, I wish I would, I would rather rob U.S. Bank, U.S. bank is immoral, they're already planning to layoff employees, it's impossible to get people engaged when the people know U.S. Bank’s trying to cut them off.

Excuse my meandering speech. For the sake of brevity, I will skip all the boring parts. Drats, unfortunately I can't do that. I promised at the start of this endeavor to make this solely a work on real life, which is often very, very boring. See, this is the literature you get when you haven't had a World War or any kind of war for—oh no, there was Iraq and there was Afghanistan, but those were terrible proxy wars. I'm not so sure how culturally significant those ones will be later on. At most, I guess they'll could inspire a some kind of Orwellian American Literature; Patriot Act and all that.

Now, group project. I narrowed it down. I was assigned so that I was able to come up with a slides talking about how the real wages of Americans according to Congress hasn’t increased in over 4 decades while the rich got richer. If it were possible, I'd display the graph, but outside of people getting poor, I didn’t want to make the case there on the slides so I’ll make note of it here: it's just in 1979 over the four years from 1979 to 2020 more women entered the workforce and coincidentally the wages of men stayed the same for four decades. So, it kind of makes you wonder.

Excuse me, I don't like the language I use in that last sentence. It's far too insincere, so I'll spell it bluntly. What's that literary term? Occam’s Razor. The simplest solution is usually the answer. It's not really anyone's fault. Not now, at least. But the reason why wages have stayed the same since 1979? It's because the wages of the girls had to increase compared to men's. And the reason why they increased data wise was because the wages of the man has stayed the same. Ergo, in a society where women didn't compete for men for the same jobs, the wages of men would have actually grown. Unfortunately, it happened through legislation that our economy was structured much differently in a way which, well, goes against the natural order of things. And by natural order, I don't mean to say that woman or girls aren't supposed to work. From a Catholic perspective, especially in the book of Judges, women and Men were ordered to go to war. It's just, there's a difference between competition and cooperation. In a Christian society, there are jobs which both men and a woman can have that will both increase income and the real wage, but when both sexes are competing for the same jobs, for the same wage pool, then it'll happen that the pie has to be split more evenly. And while two people are too busy fighting over the pie, some folks at the top will just keep getting richer and richer. And mind you, the data shows that only rich woman and a rich man got richer, while all the men and all the women below basically just went at each other like cats and dogs. And you have to excuse me once again for these run on sentences.

Now that I speak, I realize how often they're placed. As for these wages, there's no going back right now. We can't go back, at least not for this generation. You can't take back the past. Man can only do the best with what they have and sin no more moving on. It's egregious, actually. The hardest thing for a woman to do? The hardest job for a woman to get in 2024 is housewife. And excuse me if I'm being overly cynical about it, but you know, with the how people are these days, maybe becoming a housewife’s about as hard as becoming a CEO. You need a lot of luck, you need a lot of work, and you need to find the right people. Then the average goes that you get married, both sexes have to work to buy a house and then the woman can't be a housewife for circumstance forces her to work against man to live.

See, I've been thinking because over this day, I've been opping myself over my sight. Yea, Marc wears glasses. I wear glasses. And lately it's been hard for me to look at the screen on my phone, and as they're bringing it closer, it hurts to look into it without my glasses. I mean to say that I usually stare at my phone without glasses, but it's been getting harder to do. To soothe my anxieties, I looked up Theodore Roosevelt. Who also had glasses and who was that great president of a better age, a better page in American history. I had to learn that God works in mysterious ways because if Roosevelt hadn't been blind, he would have died. It was sometime, I believe, when he was giving a speech that an assailant tried to assassinate him by shooting him in the breast. What saved him was a case for his glasses in his breast pocket. So there being a reason for his near sightedness, I rest assured knowing that there is a reason for mine.

What was I talking about again? The state of woman and man, and how women were perhaps tricked into reducing the wages of the middle and lower classes in this country. That's all in the past. The only way that man can come on top out of this as if everyone works together. In this age though, average man, the common man will have to work with the common woman to build their future. It's not optimal, it's not ideal to see man and woman competing for jobs, but what happens will have to happen. I am confusing myself again. I'm meandering. People should cooperate. That’s all.

Now moving past this group project. I went into accounting. Took a little quiz. I'm sure an accounting major would find the content riveting, but as someone majoring in marketing I dozed off through those classes even with the quiz. I wish I could describe how I was more anxious about it. I'm afraid I can't. My accounting professor let us all out at 12. From there, I drove to Quenneville to grab lunch at Burger King, a Whopper. Great, now I'm just recalling events. There's no literary element to this. Or perhaps I'm too tired because the hour is 9. Yeah, the hour is 9.

My sister, she sleeps in the other room. I can't yell too much or act too passionate because my sister needs to sleep, the poor girl, and she needs to wake up tomorrow to go to school. And at school she will study to get A's in her AP classes, and then she'll go to college for school for four more years. Then she’ll go another 4 to become a lawyer, and she'll get dark bags under her eyes. She’ll wander a schedule that will drain all the life.

Describing what she was born and manufactured to be I can't help but feel that I was, before my baptism, immature. Granted, much like her, it wasn’t much my fault either. The mind without God at its helm is impressionable. So many are born looking for answers and these answers are … God bless, I guess I mean to say that I went through a phase where I thought it was woman's fault that all girls were evil. It was explained through an evolutionary defect. I think they call it under a different name now: hypergamy. The idea is that about how females—yea, they have to use the animal term for them—females in nature gravitate towards the top 10%. of males, while the other 90% are left to, I don't know, just rot and die.

I will start by stating that hypergamy is real in the animal kingdom. Of animals, lions really do own a harem of beautiful females who naturally gravitate towards him. Then there's the ape, the chimpanzees the gorilla which the world today claims are very close ancestors. Knowing God has a purpose for all things. I think I can be at peace knowing why I've learned of such ridiculous concepts in my youth.

It's so I could affirm for myself that man, men are gods. They’re gods, as it was written in the law of God. What was made in the image of God is a god. Nothing else in creation was made in His image except us. The man who is God is not an animal. A man who is man is.

The great lie of modernity, of Darwinism, which is baked into our animalistic society: the lie is that the gods are animals. By this lie the gods reduced themselves to the level of apes, lions and chimpanzees. And of course, when gods are reduced to animals, they will be as animals. They are hypergamous because they—and I notice how I'm repeating in my speech. I want to quote the enemy who God loves even in his hell. Lies spoken enough times become the truth. Imagine if the truth was spoken repeatedly, again and again and again. So I will say it again. It's not their fault, it's not anyone's fault today, but they are a society of gods playing as apes, and there are very few in the world today willing to take their place gods.

In the course of 100 years, the story of humanity has devolved from those who were born as gods from the heavens to those born from a cosmic soup of incestuous cells. The best part about all of this is that, well, I guess the Protestants haven't looked too far into it. Granted they still do more research than the Catholics themselves, who now like to placate. I guess you could say they like to appease the enemy every now and then. Not that I blame them. You know, from the Pope's perspective, at any moment the world could turn rogue and start murdering his sheep. It's just as a Catholic when you read the visions of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, you realize God had everything down planned. Excuse me.

***

So there's been a little drama over my choice of job as a salesman for the Knights. It's 11:00 now, and I'm too tired to write of it. I'll just say that it got sorted out, I appreciated my parents concern, I listened patiently, and everything was settled. The old me would have yelled a lot more at my ma and pa. Now, I understand their fears. A job based entirely around commissions is a scary thought. Even so, finishing the conversation on a cheerful note where both of us understood.

Leaving for my room, then stopping in the bathroom, I received a thought that perhaps the work of prospecting and calling, to bear fruit in the sense, of selling—I don't wish to use the term sell when promoting Gospel. Perhaps the, no, not perhaps. The work of the Knights of Columbus is the work of the Gospel. Success sales wise in this department, this organ of the church will not be dependent on myself, but on my cooperation with God's will. As a salesman for a Catholic religious order I only need to be the instrument of God's will. Whether I succeed or fail, it will be up to Him.

Excuse me … I've been saying that a lot. That's a long ways from now, and truly, if the Knights of Columbus was so hard to sell, then the order wouldn't exist. Surely there is, surely there's a charism behind the mission of caring for Catholic families. And hey, isn't it amazing how a Catholic priest, Blessed Father Michael Mcgivney, decided to come up with a form of life insurance before it was popularized? You know what, not every company can say that they have the prayers of a Blessed backing their conduct. So, I have to quit saying so. Blessed Father Michael McGivney, pray for us.

VII
11/20/24, Wednesday : A Just Inequality

Asian parents are exhausting. I wish I could be more mad, but what I get is what I’m most grateful to get from children who’ve lived in concentration camps. From the view of the camp, suppose so long as one has kept their children clothed, fed … Dad and Ma are strange. Everything they do’s out of love, but degrading your children’s abilities so they can—I don’t know how to say.

“If I had a brain like you I’d …”

First off, you make the argument that I’m more intelligent by having a brain you don’t have. Then, using the brain you do have, you say that if you had the brain you don’t have you would do a thing which the haver of the brain is not doing. Do alcoholics tell their non-alcoholic children, “If were sober like you, I’d be an astronaut?”

Like, I understand you want your kid to go six figures in debt so they could become a doctor or lawyer. Nobody complains about their children becoming doctors or lawyers. People complain if their children become firefighters and police officers, though, so in the soul, suppose everyone knows why nobody complains if their children enter certain occupations. Vanity demands the prestige of a savior and funds born of greed. Guess there’s also less risk of life.

I will put this aside. The hour is 1 in the afternoon. I was tired this morning because they, at 10 at night, ordered that I come down. In our living room they decided to give me an hour long lecture over how much I sucked for getting a job paid in commissions. To think my mother has the gall to ask on other days why I have bags under my eyes.

It’s crazy to think that one’s own parents are injurious to one’s health. Actually, it’s not so crazy, which is why it’s so terrible. This should not be a trope of Midwest America. Still, I acknowledge many others have it far worse. It’s a shame I can even comfort myself with thoughts like these.

Anywho, this lunch-hour, at the Carlson dining hall I saw a man, who I knew from my HR class, scoping his head around the place like a hawk. His name was Blake, and him being a veteran out the Army I had to wonder if he was working through some instinct. He had the build of a wrestler, no doubt built from a diet of MREs. Stocky, firm, with just enough fat and just enough muscle around the neck to tell that this was a man who could give more than he gets. Nonetheless, he struck me as a sensitive man. When asked by Professor Matt how others ought to be treated, he said with a force missing from most men, that is, conviction, “Going in the military you meet all kinds of people. Some have been shooting since they were five. Some never learned to read till high school. Others come from the city and never held a gun in their life. Even so, you have to learn how to work together. It’s best to keep an open mind and be willing to work where people are at.” I was struck by his voice. Na, I was more struck by his title, military, because as a boy, secretly, soldier was my dream career. My mother put a stop to it by forcing me down the academic path, but the fantasy of heroism in war stays with me to this day.

This aside, I remembered him because when I told our Professor outright, “A trip to the unexplored Artic in 1880 on a wooden boat should not hire women,” Professor Matt had to ask, “Why?”

“Why? It’s a wooden boat into dangerous territory. This isn’t a cruise trip. There’s no need for a girls to die. Cold like that’s for the eskimo girls.”

“Are you saying only men should be allowed to die on this trip?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Rambo put it best when he said, ‘Men are more disposable.’”

This statement caused a shock. Professor Matt, in good faith, quieted the room by moving on to a less lethal situation where women were discriminated against; something to do with workplace chemicals affecting fertility. For this discussion, Blake came stood in front of me, and said, “Peyton, you’re right, but you’re supposed to keep silent on the obvious thing,” and offered me his hand. We shook. My hand was crushed because having conditioned myself to a lifetime of wristlet handshakes at university, I adjusted my strength to 50%. Blake was the first hand here that gave it 100% like my fellow Knights. When he left my hand was numb, and I had to reconfirm with Ma at the end of the day whether this vet went out of his way to offer his advice or crush me.

Either way, Blake made his impression on me well enough for me to recognize him everywhere at the university, and it was then at lunch where I saw him turning his head around Carlson hall like he was still on watch. A part of me wished to speak to him, ask him why he sat alone at a table turning his head around. I ultimately didn’t because using Scripture as my justification I preferred to close my lips, and left without saying a word. “Let your yea be yea and your nay be nay.” Any extra word puts yourself at risk of judgement.

An hour after the fact, coming up to my next class, Sales, under Mr. Bob … I think I send a good deal of steam up to my brain hyping myself up to talk to people before putting the breaks on to keep silent.

I don’t know if not talking is a fault against the virtue of loving one’s neighbor. If words could help, surely one would be obligated to speak. The words I speak, I don’t know if they’re ever helpful outside of work.

If I had talked to Blake, I wouldn’t be here writing about it. Maybe I made the right choice to begin with. It can’t be right to enter a conversation where the inclination is to gawk at one’s military experience. It can’t be right either to just watch someone sit alone scouting the whole room as if he were just a lonely kid in high school wondering if someone would sit with him.

Maybe Blake also wonders how there could be so many lonely people gathered in a single place? Truth be told, the only place I feel lonely is at the university. Maybe it’s the same for him. I’ll settle that God wills what He will.

A man should keep his speech to what’s essential. He should say only helpful things. If he doesn’t know if something’s either helpful or harmful then he should refrain entirely.

***

It’s 9:00 again. And by 9, I mean 9:00 at night. Today was a rather, well, I’ll say it was a pleasant day. Most of it was. School as usual. Before I had to quit writing for class, I was describing Blake. He’s just a person of interest who we never speak to, like most people. It’s terrible. I’ve basically spent the whole semester watching the—you know what? I won’t go into detail. Whoever thought of co-gendered schools must have been a terrible villain. To be surrounded by beautiful woman in a work setting. And yes, I can say this because I’m not a monkey who commits himself to solitary perversions. With beautiful woman, the last thing I want to do as a man is look into a laptop, deeply, or onto the contents of a projector, longingly. At the very least, I can commiserate with my professors over how unnatural everything is. I can’t imagine presenting to a room full of men, full of students staring not at them, but at whatever they’ve got going on their laptops.

Yea, I realize now life is tough for everyone. And why? I’ve never mentioned it before, but I suppose my online life is just as much real life as real life. In the past, they had a drama of letters. Now they have a drama of emails, text messages and whatnot. Would it surprise you that I have my own website? Who is the you in this case? The Lesser Word, you won’t find it searching it up on Google. I still haven’t figured out how to get the SEO to work. Even so, it’s on Neocities on its own little block. And I don’t want to talk too much about this website, no, rather I wish to talk about other people’s websites, which enlightened me these past few months. By past few months, I mean starting from—starting from the point of my actual conversion, post-baptism. I won’t list any specific names. I can say that learning from people and seeing sites made by people who’ve had it much worse than myself has helped me become more grateful about my situation.

Even though my parents degrade me without knowing, they at least degrade me out of love. A lot of people have parents that can’t even do that; make an act founded in love a selfless care for the other person where you don’t really care what they think, but you only care what’s best for them second to what they think. Where it’s not what’s best for themselves, but it’s what’s best for the person you’re degrading. Why, I know they do this out of love because if they weren’t … excuse me, it’s just, since I was a toddler, I could never understand things like divorce.

I can understand a separation where a man and wife has to separate from each other over whatever issue they might have. Maybe the husband acknowledges he’s an alcoholic, so he goes on a journey to a temple of some kind to find a wise old man to punch the booze out of them; some kind of Kung Fu plot like that and the wife just stays at home hoping that her husband gets better. I understand a separation like that. Where a man can be far away from his woman for a period of time but still acknowledge her as his wife.

What I don’t understand for parents today in this part of the world is, why, if you loved your children you wouldn’t make the sacrifice of putting up with the person you hate just so they could grow up in a home where they have an immediate access to both their father and their mother. From what I imagine, every excuse is made. The child can grow up without a mother. The child can grow up without a father. There are many successful people raised by single mothers today. Maybe these divorcees have tunnel vision in regard to the countless black men who have ended up in gangs, buried because they had no father to keep them under control. In any case, I believe people divorce only for themselves. They don’t—maybe they love their children, but only up to a point. The Divorcee, and it’s their terrible sin, they love themselves more than they love their children. I guess I can understand if it’s been put that bluntly, but I don’t think I want to understand. It’s like that.

So I’m grateful that though my own parents didn’t always see eye to eye on everything, they stayed together for my sake.

And my brothers and my sisters, I have to apologize if some of the web people, the webmasters who I’ve visited can’t relate. I’ll you this, as encouragement, that the preacher I knew, the evangelical who first brought me into the faith, couldn’t relate either. On his part, I don’t think I could ever tell the man, any man, that his parents loved themselves more than they loved him. It’s already bad enough that his birth was accidental, according to how they’ve tried to prevent it. He has suffered this truth. Yet he is happ—happier than me.

Granted, when he was my age, he was also quite dour, and he felt the Lord in a bout of depression. Yea, see, I have to apologize on why I’m not speaking coherent at this time. I tell you, 9:00 at night, I have to level my tone to make sure my little sister doesn’t wake. If there was ever an entry at this time, that is why there’s no particular element of a story to it. I’m just streaming my thoughts. But if these thoughts are to have any historical significance on what life was like at this time, specifically for an alien from Laos born in Minnesota, then I will be quite satisfied that I was able to write a book about this.

And maybe this is more genuine than most other Diaries of this type. This being online, typed on a computer. Sometimes to the keyboard, sometimes through speech to text. I can only hope. Under God, it serves the purpose it’s meant to serve.

Back to the websites and their respective webmasters. I don’t know how much content is just people pretending to play an avatar. One trying to play an avatar? That’s fine, that’s acting. I know there is a lot of talk within this circle that I’m on, the Neocities cabal, over how people should not open their real identities in an online space. That I agree with sometimes. From the stand of anonymity, people, they can be their genuine selves. To have an avatar to act in a place where your identity as person won’t be judged—that’s, that’s a training for genuine, this genuinity. To put a mask on and act without people knowing who you are in public life. It trains you to be real, and once you capture that feeling behind a name that allows one to be real it’s difficult to escape from the high. Because after playing these avatars, you realize that you need a place to be real. You need to be real and you want to be real at all times. Unfortunately, we often feel we can’t feel our real selves. Everywhere we go: at work, at home, at school, when we play the avatar, the ones that aren’t ourselves but the ones with our true name. So when I think of places like this, webmastering, the Internet, of social media in general which many come here to Neocities to escape from, I just have to wonder how good life would be if people could under their real names be their real selves. Maybe we wouldn’t need sites like Neocities where everyone could escape the trend of using real names just to be their real selves. Maybe we could just be on Instagram, just posting whatever we wanted, however we wanted, saying whatever we wanted because being real is the only way for a person to live. A man isn’t a brand, the brand is a consequence of who he is, whatever that means. At the end of the day, a man’s only a man and the force one to be something they aren’t or something they don’t want to be is … we can’t live in a society of actors. It’s not right. On one hand, the man of this world wants to be an ape. On the other hand, the man wants to be a man. They want to be what they are. He wants to be what he is.

And I’m meandering again. I’ll just sum this thought by saying. I think it’s ok for people to be themselves. It should be encouraged. It’s only unfortunate that we live in a time where people feel they can only be themselves only after coming up with a fake name and a fake avatar to paint over their real names. If Marc could just be Marc and not something like —— then maybe I could grow out of this superhero phase. Then maybe I could be like authors, the ones I’ve read they, maybe not Doctor Seuss but people like Richard Harding Davis. Authors who have lived full lives journaling their lives lived next to other. It could be possible for me to become a public figure like them, not afraid of being who I am in any place but just being Marc.

I believe that’s all I have to say on this topic. In other news, we had our snow first snowfall today. Thankfully, it won’t be a snowless November. I will have snow on my birthday, November 28^th, Thanksgiving Day, and thinking about it, I’ll be going from 21 to 22. Twenty years alive, thankfully I’ve changed. Having put some thought into the character of Saint Joseph, given his example it’s clear to know that there are noble, good things for a young man to keep his eye on and bad things. To be like Saint Joseph? What does someone have to do? They have to be a chaste man and they have to work in a field in a workplace entirely dominated by other men.

Back to my birthday. It hurts me. Maybe I really was born to have a character like a turkey. It’s the way they wobble, the way they gobble, the way they’re really determined and not really knowing what they’re doing, but they’re determined anyways. Determinedly determined in confusion that—that’s what a Turkey’s like, and I kind of, I kind of feel that way. I—I have an end to where I wanna go, but I kind of just wobble, turn, go forward, go back, right, left. I—I somehow no matter how I twist I get to where I need to go, and maybe this is just a pleasant lie I tell myself, but you know, it’s turkeys they—they aren’t so bad. They actually, they fight a lot better than they do eagles. Granted, I guess the eagle could assassinate a turkey if they flew in from the sky, but when it comes to an actual fight the turkey will win every time. For one, it’s a bigger bird, and secondly, well, even a Turkey has its claws. And if you didn’t know, turkeys can fly too. So, you know, just like me, they have like a useful skill that’s hardly ever used. I mean, what I refer to myself in this respect is my ability to dance. But there’s never a scenario in this world where you’ll have to dance.

So I mean, my flights, just like how flight is a bit of a—it’s a good ability for a turkey to have, but it’s a bit useless because they don’t—they don’t have many reasons to fly. I—I have, I can dance. What kind of dancing? The kind that’s learned when you live in a world where opportunities to dance are few. I believe I made a blog post about this somewhere else. It was disco, hip-hop, and whatever video I could find online to copy. So coming to November 28th, I’ll be a 22-year-old turkey who waddles in his step and gets to where he needs. And why I’m growing quite tired now? I’ll—I’ll just head to bed and fix the grammar and this tomorrow.

VIII
11/26/24, Tuesday : A Woman’s Mid-life Horses

If I pulled my weight, I could get a manuscript by the end of November. Suppose it never hit me before, but when one lives life one has less time to write. Maybe living life’s more fulfilling than writing. This past week, I’ve been working with the Knights. I did Boomer things like bingo and omelets. I was part of the food team for each these events. One family on the draw won three turkeys while one brother knight missed his for door duty. Next meet, we’ll motion for us to buy him one.

I’ve been doing something dangerous. I’ve been thinking. I’ve been praying. Boomers aren’t so bad. The ones I’ve met, they’re aware of the opportunities they’ve received which younger generations don’t have. Outside religion, I can’t help but feel the worst of them are animals who like beasts kick their young into the wild after reaching an age. Nonetheless, the ones I’ve met, they keep their children with them knowing their children try and wait until they’re ready to fly. I think this is because they know what it’s like to start something from the ground-up. They have businesses making zero dollars. Somehow, these businesses made enough to raise a wife and kids. Then they see their kids with negative dollars working not for themselves, but for corporations who have no care for them. These Boomers are more merciful, and being one who was as young as some of their sons once were or as old as some of their sons will be, I’ve found a kindness I was never raised to expect.

Or maybe this is what making omelets with other men does to a man. For 21 years I’ve lived isolated from the rest of Springtown. It’s this year that I’ve finally entered into the community that’s been attached since the town’s inception.

What’s more, two days before my birthday, and one or two more weeks of college until I graduate. I’ve prayed rosaries for a relationship. Now? Just today I saw on the news Chris-Chan got a woman pregnant, willingly. The criminal, retarded and ugly. I would never wish to be him, just seeing him then, walking line and line with his beau, it helped me realize God makes someone for everyone. Yea, for so long as someone wants someone, God allows someone for someone. Chris’s relationship isn’t holy, so God only allowed rather than willed.

Disjointed. I wonder if I should describe any specific episode from my life; one from the previous days.

On Saturday, three days before, at noon I went to a man’s house, his acreage, his farm located just a drive on the road behind my house. His name was Luke, and I didn’t expected him to have a farm. I took a left to the roundabout, took a right there, and followed a road etched through wheat fields, barns, and farms I never knew existed. Seeing those, I thought Luke would have lived in a regular house, still, because in previous talks I thought he told me his wife’s horse had lived somewhere outside his house. It seemed we’ve had different interpretations of what “Outside the house” meant because when I got there, Luke was on a tractor next to his barn in the backyard directing his six-year-old son in yardwork, and right yonder was his pasture, yes, outside the house, but a stone’s throw away from the house. It also turned out horse meant horses. Luke had three, because his physician of a wife had a mid-life femininity crisis and decided to splurge on the girl equivalent of a Ferrari. I haven’t told him this yet, but boys buy sports cars and girls buy horses. His wife, Tiffany, bought horses because she wanted to feel like a girl. The work of a physician makes her feel like a man. So does making more money than her husband, though Luke does lead in the noble work of Men’s Ministry at Saint Mary’s, our church.

In fact, I’m sure Luke’s only able to afford the horses and acreage because of Tiffany’s, his wife’s, occupation. While I can guess the financial decisions are still filtered through Luke’s command, I can only imagine the stress his wife’s must feel for making the income of a man, that is a man’s occupation, physician.

So after leaving my car, greeting Luke, shaking his hand, I could not help but feel that touring around the back of his house where the three horses, the pasture, and chickens ran that Luke’s wife, working at a hospital on Saturday, was in no enviable position. She worked, as did her husband, and while she worked her children remained home making whatever mess they liked.

I’ve only visited once. Maybe the two, Luke and his wife, work as a team. They probably do the best they can given the circumstance modernity allows. I just can’t help but wonder if the devil has a hand in convincing young girls to dedicate their lives to people who won’t care about them when they die. Even as a physician, the patients he saved won’t be at the funeral. His family will.

Where am I going with this? Somehow, while raking leaves in Luke’s backyard, I couldn’t help but feel that a little girl who liked horses was convinced to crush her dream to live as a wife in a little house on the prairie. I’ll give, that she was a wife, and she had a prairie, but much the property was enjoyed more by the husband who never asked to trouble himself daily with a farmer’s chores. I asked Luke much about the chickens and horses. He never wanted them. His wife, and the children who’ve never scooped a shovel of horse crap did. He allowed them to be bought. Somewhere down the line arrived a poodle named Snickers. Then the rest of them got names, and in “It was over,” as he put it. And, I didn’t see them, but I heard of them. Apparently, his family owned a couple of bearded dragons.

In short, while raking and carrying sticks, I considered how reasonably Luke’s depression was. Here was a 44-year-old man dealing with pets he’d never asked for, who never had pets, but now trained prepubescent kids to pick up crap. On my end, I found the work enjoyable. Got fresh air, exercise, avoided stepping on the horse poop, was treated pizza during break, and to a pay of $70 for five hours by the end of it. During break, we had a pleasant chat. He ran a program which kept Catholic men accountable for porn use.

“Yea Luke, these things are cursed.”

“For sure.”

“I mean literally, as in cursed cursed—like people have witches case spells over the tapes so people can’t break—stay addicted.”

“Well Marc, even without the curse these things are still cursed.”

“Agreed. Anyways, Jon Hamilton?”

“Oh, I probably should’ve kept the name hidden.” Luke laughed, and we talked more about the sin’s prevalence amidst men.

With him, I couldn’t help but think, “Was watching porn really that common?” Maybe a part of me didn’t want to realize that I wasn’t that special, but I did. Among men, I was quite common, though I suppose how I’ve quit porn was less common.

“Well Luke, I recognized that God made us as gods, that we were not apes, but gods. The history of man in the past 100 years is man going from acknowledging themselves as gods, coming from heaven, to apes. I mean the Chinese thought they were built from heaven, Pharoah was literally god. As for us, God says what he said.”

“Marc, we’re not God.”

“I know we’re not God, Luke, but it’s written in God’s law, ‘Ye are gods.’ We’re not Gods, but gods, lesser-case g, not capital. So when it came to porn, I had to ask myself, realize, that I wanted to be the god God wanted me to be. Plus, there comes a point where a man realizes that it’d be healthier for him to buy a person than to do anything alone. Saint Augustine says as much. Both sins are still mortal, but the single sin has more … offense. It’s more disordered. It’s also ridiculous too how men will get in a line to do what they wished to do behind a screen when—look, why even wait on any actress’s call when you could just have her bought? Why even go alone at all?”

“That makes sense, Marc. Even so, I think people still commit this sin because, even if it doesn’t make sense logically they require a means to medicate. They don’t want to do it, but the pleasure makes it so their lives feel more tolerable.”

“I guess you’re right. All I can say is that with God anything is possible.”

Yea, I was going to say I cured myself through reason. Because I was a god and because escorts were the more ordered sin, I quit the sin common amidst all men. Now that I reflect, no, I was cured through prayer and fasting, especially of the prayer of the Rosary where after getting into the discipline of praying the five decade chaplet each day—our Mother Mary allowed me through grace to internalize reason into my soul to keep myself away from sins of fornication. Through the Rosary, I learned there was happiness in chastity, and not a chastity which was merely physical, but a chastity physical and mental. Then to know the hands bathed in sin were the same hands which were allowed to clutch that holiest instrument for salvation in heaven and earth, the Rosary; I removed myself from lust, and continued to do so till this day. Even during this birthday week of mine, yesterday I had to ask myself when was the last time I dreamed of a wedding with a girl I liked? Never. I never dreamed of weddings, just fornication, which meant that since I was a boy, this world had rigged me from the start to seek a disordered prize.

I am moving away from what I did with Luke. I helped out at his farm. I did nothing more than that. No, I’m just excusing myself of the effort. There’s only so much a pen can do to capture the art of life. God has already written what He’s written. How can man capture the love a father has for his sons? The anger he has over their lack of work ethic? How he can be mad at them for throwing chicken crap on the path, but then wrestle them ten minutes later as if nothing were wrong in the world? What of the child, a boy of twelve growing into a man, who required a man with the face of alien to teach him properly how one should shovel with the legs instead of the arms. “Saul, don’t use your arms to shovel. Push with your legs and lift. If you use your arms, you shovel nothing, plus you break your back.”

The man of today, of 2024, deals with Fortnite addictions and porn, but these dragons, how man overcomes them has their own art. I just haven’t overcome mine—which is to say I’m freed from solitary sins and never got into paying young women to entertain; it’s just I’ve never dreamed of a wedding.

No, I’ve never dreamed of a wedding with a girl I liked. I dreamed of fornication, so if I were to interpret the malady of my own soul, in regard to chastity the prognosis is that lust butchered chastity before chastity even began.

So if I were a common man, if lust killed chastity before chastity could live I’d rather be uncommon than common. What a world we’d live in if of weddings women and men had never dreamed.

***

Now, I don’t want to end on a dour note. Today, my childhood friend called. Childhood friend, a bit of an embarrassing term, but accurate nonetheless. Out of childhood, there’s no such thing as best friends, so childhood friend is what we settle on. A bond that’s kept from having grown in the same town. It’s a strong one, which feels embarrassing to have in a world where people were trained to use each other as means to an end. But in this friend’s another reason for me to be grateful to my ma and pa. I never had to move, so I can say that I’ve had a friend since childhood, who unlike me hasn’t used his “friends” as means, but has stayed with them because he has truly enjoyed them.

I’m about as much a friend of virtue as someone living in a state of mortal sin may consider me. Zek, my friend whom I’ve grown with, he’s been my friend though I myself have been a terrible friend to him growing up. Suppose I may confess here, since I’ll end up confessing anyways at the end of the world. When we were boys, though I did like hanging out with Zeke, I made excuses to avoid hanging out with him. In short, I was what street-smart kids would have called a “fake friend.” Say someone like Ike called me to hang out. I’d quit all my plans to hang out with Zack because, maybe Ike was a friend of convenience where one didn’t need to be so vulnerable. Maybe I was a bad person then. I was the bad friend. It being so late now, I won’t elaborate. The twist was Zeke was a Catholic all along, just born. When I converted I found out, and it hit me then how terrible a friend I was. Since elementary school I’ve known this man, and only after baptism when I was 21 did I learn of his religion. He doesn’t follow it now. He knows God’s real, but like many born Catholics he doesn’t keep the Church’s law.

IX
11/29/24, Friday : Discourse on Chastity

Marc’s Thanksgiving birthday – Singing amidst a family in mortal sin – Why don’t you have a girlfriend? – Girls like ugly men – Discourse on marriage, chastity, and virginity – Marc wants to marry a kissless virgin – Marc must be a kissless virgin – How Christians compromise chastity – What perfect chastity looks like in Mary and Joseph – Kiss your wife when she’s your wife – Difficulties of discussing virginity equal to the word nigger – The tragedy of lost virginity – When people say there’s no such thing as a Disney romance – Disney romances or fairytales are only for people who follow the Bible because fairytales were written by a Bible-reading people – No prostitute Cinderella – No fairytale romance for fornicators – What sinners have instead are histories of repentance worthy of inspiring poetic epics instead of fairytales – Marc speaks on the horror of being handsome to teenage girls – How people may signal interest the same way at every age – Remembering Ciel – What matters in the end; who gets in heaven

Guess I’m 22 now. Yesterday’s Thanksgiving was my birthday. It finally passed. The day after I don’t know what to feel. Thinking over these past entries, I almost forget the purpose. If the goal was to keep a log, a history of a man living in reality then I’m afraid I’ve fallen short.

These entries on the computer are similar to those on the page. Wandering thoughts, that vapid form of literature called “stream of consciousness.” I write like this because a flaw in my soul maybe deems the happenings of my life as unimportant.

Like, what did Marc do on the day of his birth? In the morning he woke, diddled around till 14:00 with a baseball bats and Indian clubs. He was called down to blow out his cake. No, rather, he wished to blow it out earlier but the rest of his family had trouble waking up. His sister, since they planned to go to an uncle’s house for the holiday, just stayed upstairs doing whatever girls do to get ready for an event. Somehow, she figured out how to buy him a coffee during this period where, getting so bored of waiting in the morning, Marc ran back up to his room to swing clubs. Eventually, in the afternoon Marc did blow his cake, which was not one cake, but many little, circle cheesecakes with smooth whipped cream topped with fruit. Marc ate, then left with his family to attend Thanksgiving dinner with his mother’s side of the family at Uncle Li’s house.

This gathering, too dour to describe. Granted, life’s not like the movies, but this was a party with the character of an ailing town. For Marc, as a child, there were more cousins, more toys, more ways to play at every gathering. The men used to set a poker table. The women used to set a mat for cards. They drank. This was when Marc was a child, but he guessed people moved away, and tastes for parties changed as one got older. Therefore, by Marc’s 22^nd year, when he sat himself through Thanksgiving with the uncles, aunts, and cousins who remained, he couldn’t help but feel the slog. Karaoke was sung, and his younger cousin who was a boy of eleven years couldn’t help but goad him into a game called “Demon Child” in the basement. For the scares, Marc could hardly play along. He quit, but a part of him felt for his younger cousin whose only other playmate was an even younger cousin attached to an iPad. The younger cousin was what the people called an “iPad kid,” and this kid of the iPad with the light of the screen four inches from his face played Roblox where he shot, killed, and maimed people spoused in the figure of cylindrical and or cubed statues.

What a shame for the demon child. His cousins were all too old for children’s games. Nonetheless, as a Catholic Marc grew out of pagan games anyways. He would have been more scared than he already was playing “Demon Child” if the child he played with started to crawl on walls for real.

Even so, after this game, Marc enjoyed just being in the presence of people who cared about him. In every one of his family members, there was that awkwardness of soul which came from being raised as aliens in foreign soil. These were a people raised by corporations, Hollywood, and the ideals espoused by the back labels of Transformer and Barbie toys, so being a man who has found and sought beauty in the ancient world, Marc—of course Marc found himself tired of the affair. He loved his family, but languor proceeded over passion, and to know every one of them has lived in a mortal state since birth … the evil was too much to bear, so on this day, Marc’s birthday, Marc quieted his mind to only sit, walk, sing, and observe.

He sang karaoke without putting his soul in it. He ate without enjoyment. Sitting on the stairs, he thought a little when his aunt asked him, in passing, “Do you have a girlfriend yet?” Yea, Marc could have one. He knew of girls who crushed on him. A kick on his chair, a brush of the leg, a graze of the arm; why didn’t he have a beau? “No, not yet,” he answered.

Eventually, after singing more songs, Marc went home. On the way back, his parents berated him in the car for not making as much money as his cousin, who was a “C” student. Thankfully, he had headphones to drown out the noise. Still, he figured with the evidence right in front of them they’d have been able to come to the conclusion that good grades weren’t correlated to good pay. At the very least, Marc was thankful that his parent’s down talking came from a place of love. Not a lot of people could say the same. That their parents talked crap about them because they wanted them to live better. Some parents just hate their kids, and whether they feel guilt over it or not, this would be something they could only admit with God. Without Him, they’ll live pretending to love. It was for this, that Marc was thankful to have had parents who loved more than hated.

Coming home, yea, I prayed, slept, had a messy dream, and this brings me to today where after attending morning mass, I write to keep this log.

Do I have a girlfriend? No, and frankly, I’m at a point in my life where I’ve started to see why so many marriages were arranged. It pains me somewhat knowing that girls have been attracted to me. Not for my looks because I’m an alien, a handsome alien yea, but still an alien surrounded by handsome natives. In Minnesota, amidst Germans and Scandinavians, I know where preferences land on the looks-scale.

I’m wasn’t born in Laos where Lao women prefer Lao men. I was born in America where whites prefer whites, blacks prefer blacks, and vice versa. We’re so dehumanized here we don’t even run by the name of our tribe. I say this, but this only relates to looks which matter, but can be a disadvantage to overcome.

I’ve mentioned previously how Chris-Chan, that freak, found a paramour. I’d draw him, but my heart tightens staring at him for more than five seconds. If Chris-Chan could get a girlfriend, I’ve no doubt in my mind that I could have one too. I know girls are attracted to me. Thanks Chris-Chan. Mathematical probabilities, you’ve proved me right. Women do want to know what it’s like to have an ugly dude.

But I will say this is one of the most exciting things

Which happened in my life. Perhaps you know it too?

It’d be girls for you, but for me, when I see a guy,

An ugly guy I sometimes wonder what it’d be like

To kiss said guy, even though he’s ugly.

However, it always comes back to marriage, chastity, and the V word, virginity. To deal with the first, when it comes to marriage, I’d rather not marry a girl who’s had a lot of boyfriends. In turn, I’ve received a block in my soul which prevents hypocrisy. I don’t want my wife to have had any boyfriends. As a man who fears God I’ve been ordered to want for others what I’d want for myself. I don’t want my wife to have had any boyfriends. Ergo, I can’t have a girlfriend. Ergo, my first girlfriend’s my first wife because I expect the same from the girl I pray to marry. This puts me in a kerfuffle with today’s culture though. Today, people expect romance before marriage, so it’s these girlfriend-boyfriend terms.

But it wasn’t this way in Scripture. Song of Solomon sings of the love between a betrothed woman and her groom. Rebecca, likewise is betrothed to Isaac to become his wife. Rebecca was not Isaac’s “girlfriend” preceding her title as a wife. In Moses’s case, the father of his wife betrothed his daughter to him. Again, Moses’s wife was not Moses’s “girlfriend” before she was his wife. I could mention more, but from God’s own mouth we can understand that the most virtuous of men did not take women as girlfriends before marrying them. They took them wives, whereby the woman who was intended to become a wife was betrothed by the father’s eye.

Maybe this is a long excuse. Even so, so much as Scripture agrees, I would hope that I’ve kept myself from having girlfriends because of a love for God rather than an actual inability to commit sins like fornication.

Then, to speak of chastity, the virtue’s been compromised. People compromise with Chastity. They compromise with what should never be compromised. I can talk forever about the issue. Here, it’s more useful to speak of what perfect Chastity looks like in a man. It’s Mary, the Mother of God, in short. Preceding marriage, she knew no man. Furthermore, her dress was fashioned in both effect and purpose for modesty rather than enticement. Her manners also were so impeccable that in all her work in the fields or at home she never sinned. Saint Joseph, her husband, likewise had these virtues in dress and act, though he did sin and some like the Orthodox say he was a widower. This hasn’t been confirmed by any revelation, but nonetheless, being the perfect husband and perfect wife, both parties acted chastely before marriage. They didn’t keep lovers, or any kind of halfway lover to kiss. If Mary and Joseph’s marriage were a regular one like ours, they would have only kissed during or after the wedding day.

If one has only kissed their wife as their wife, then they’ve done well in regard to Chastity. Of course, in this fallen world, most of us are repentant fish caught from the mires, but as the fallen who were saved, for our children’s sake we must remember perfection as soon as possible so they don’t fall as we did. It’s not odd today to find articles from Christians talking about how a Christian should date. Being compromised with the world, these Christians blindly compromise Chastity based on what they themselves have experienced growing up in a world without God. However, these articles only propose lesser evils to greater evils. Of course, it’d be preferable kiss or touch lightly rather than do anything worthy of a —— censor bar, but so many Christians have been trained from birth to observe the law to see how much they can get away with that they fail to turn their eyes away from this habit to see in Scriptures, in God, what perfection really is!

Christians should not be describing what’s allowed. Christians should tell what God wants! Unfortunately, it happens that most have been born into a world without God, hence why those who speak of Christian “dating,” compromise Chastity.

Perfection in this virtue is kissing your wife when she’s your wife. Now, do people fail to do this? Should one feel bad if they’ve failed? Only as bad as any other sinner, by which Scripture means bad enough to sin no more. There was a book I read called Courtship of the Saints, which has come to the same regarding conclusion regarding premarital relations. The authors mention, at the betrothal stage one may be able to give a light kiss or a hug to their betrothed. I admit, it would be reasonable to kiss the woman betrothed to be your wife. But this is only reasonable in a society built around God. In the godless world we live, kissing your wife when she’s your wife, by Scripture I find this is what God prefers.

Then to speak on virginity, my hesitancy to write shows just how sore a topic it is. It’s like niggers and rednecks. Forgive me, my social conditioning from birth causes a sore taste in my throat even writing these words. I’d call the Moors a load of niggers for enslaving Spain, but that language no matter how accurate an insult doesn’t honor God. It’d be good if nigger were to be phased out of use. On the other hand, virginity, which honors God … I should have a clean throat when speaking of it.

But I can guess it’s sensitive because a lot of men and women have failed to uphold the virtue, and that when it comes to upholding virtue it’s more comforting to pretend it’s fine than cry about it. A man who spent himself on women would prefer to think himself paramour. Vice versa, a woman who spent herself on men would prefer to think that acting outside of marriage’s a normal part of biology. Virginity, and the loss of it outside of marriage is a tragedy. It’s so great a tragedy that people will come up with any variety of comforting lie to cope with it. But there comes a day where one realizes why every fairytale for little children ends with a happily ever after or a princess drowning herself in the sea rather than kill the one she loves. It’s an unimaginable virtue, a good, to share love with one person for life. It’s a virtue to meet a person, marry them, and love them in that order.

There’s no prostitute Cinderella. For those loved, then discarded, there is no fairytale. There’s only the loss of a good they’ll never have. So the fact as predicted by Fatima that virginity hardly exists in men and women today is actually the greatest tragedy of our age. Entire generations have lost forever the gift of a chaste marriage.

It’s said often, “There’s no such thing as Disney romances.” By extension, they mean to say that it’s impossible to have a fairytale romance, by which, yea it isn’t if it means having a woman literally lift you by the hair. Women with long hair exist, but none of their necks are strong enough to support the weight of a fully grown male. But if by “fairytale romance,” they mean a marriage where one has only loved one in their life, then that’s where their wrong. This, they only say is impossible because they themselves have failed. Disney romances, the romance of fairytales are fiction, but this fiction were created by a people who’ve known God, who’ve read the Bible which was real, and in this Bible there are people who get married at first sight. In short, fairytales are fictional romances based on the historical romances found in the Bible (among other sources too, presumably; some say these tales were based on real people, but at this time the people these tales would have been based on would already be Christian). Ergo, fairytale romances can’t be achieved by moderns because moderns threw away the Bible.

And here, though a part of me—the evil part which prefers that people marry young for pleasure and economy—despises the play, forty-year-old virgins man or woman who marry another virgin, when these virgin couples are married they fulfill the virtues of Chastity, the virtues of a “fairytale romance” better than any non-virgin ever could. If they stay together until death, then it’s about as happily ever after as one could get!

But most people can’t have this because they were born and trained otherwise. Preying on fornications more profitable than chastity. When virginity’s lost through fornication, when the partner leaves and another partner’s taken, there’s no hope of fulfilling the fairytale ideal. The part of the soul that hopes to live the life of Cinderella, Rebecca, or Moses is gouged out, and there’s a hole left for us business types to fill with perfumes, romcoms, or dogs.

For such people, the only good which could equal or even exceed the joy they’d feel from receiving the good of a chaste romance would be God. I’ve elaborated in other texts. I may as well remind myself.

Of virginity. One does well to keep it physically and mentally. People either enter heaven by being innocent or repentant. The class of the innocent would be those like children and virgins who live their lives happily ever after in holy matrimony. The class of the repentant, the class us old folks God kept alive to purify, would be the class who have lost their innocence through sin. From this class of sinners, God inspires men to write poetic epics instead of fairytales. Where the virgin Cinderella enters into heaven with a little dance, the prostitute of Jericho enters heaven by committing espionage against the tribe of sinners who led her to her sorry lot.

After knowing evil, it is the God-given task of those who’ve known to make sure no one ever knows again. The pages of Scripture are filled more with epics than Disney romances. Of the two, epics are more profitable for the majority of people because as a people loved by God, in this world without Him it’s the joy of the sinner to overcome. It’s written, blessed are those who overcome. One should cry over the evil they have done. After that, overcome.

What does this have to do with me having a girlfriend? I meant to explain why I didn’t have one right now. God pray, I’d rather kiss my wife when she’s my wife. When I start working for the Knights, pray Lord that I receive the graces necessary to make 70k. Dad said he’d convert if I did. Knowing it’s Your mission to convert, make me as great a salesman as You possible can. I’d rather convert my dad working at the Knights than make more money somewhere else. By Your will to save all souls, help me save his through this work this year.

Speaking of the Knights, they have daughters. I feel Muslim saying this, or rather Biblical, when I find myself in a good spot I’ll have to ask them if they have any daughters willing to marry. Most people don’t know this because they don’t read autobiographies from the time when these things were most common. Arranged marriages are hard because they require the consent of the woman. Also, while the choice of a paramour’s based on transient traits like looks and personality, the choice of a husband’s only based on what’s permanent like virtue. Money too, but only up to a point. It’s harder to marry than it is to visit prostitutes.

Great, I’m crouched on my chair like L. I’m a gargoyle now. Now I kind of wish I had a girlfriend. This line of thought risks my chastity. It’s a good thing my home parish is full of Boomer. There’s like one other person my age who attends. Cute girl. To my shame, first thing I noticed was her child-bearing hips. She has a hairdo with brown twirls of hair falling over her ear. I know nothing about her other than that she usually comes with her parents to mass. Outside of her, I face no temptation at St. Mary’s.

What am I saying? Tomorrow, I’m meeting with the old guys at McDonald’s, Cal’s group. I should just ask them about this girl, or if there’s any girl for that matter interested in meeting any guys. That’s probably the best way to go about it anyways.

I’ve been here for some time. I’ll have a drink and eat some bread. I don’t know why. There’s a small sliver of happiness which creeps when talking of girls I like. But this has to be the remnant of a perverse soul. It’s strange. Girls do boy talk. I’ve never been part of a group of boys who did girl talk. I know they do, so this should be normal right?

Maybe, one day when I can trust these experiences come from a chaste heart, it’ll feel normal to talk of this. Twenty-two years of living, what I’d say’s laced with regret. Not regrets like being unable to kiss, but regret for—anywho, as an alien from Laos, I’ve seen plenty of biblical things in my travels which would be considered rather criminal here. One of my cousins was betrothed when she was fourteen! Just like Mary!

Here, if one planned your daughters marriage before 18, he’d be called crazy or strange. You know what’s actually criminal? Whatever that Russian in Lolita tried to do! I’ve never read the book, see, but knowing it’s the prose of man self-narrated fornications with a girl who just hit puberty. Marrying a young woman to an old man’s one thing, but to use a young woman to satiate an appetite? People today may describe those who live in jungles, the Hmong, savages for marrying girls of sixteen years to men of thirty, but at least the girl’s taken care of. The young men and women who fornicate here in Minnesota … a girl will give her soul at fourteen and her equal-in-age-legal-by-law-compadre will hop away with it. I’d rather have my daughter married to a Hmong grandpa at fourteen! Life insurance at least! What does a fornicating daughter get from her partner? A broken heart when he leaves!

Evil has been retarded in many ways. In Storm of Steel the author who was 19 was getting dinner from what would have been a high school sophomore in today’s terms. Here’s the truth. Splitting people by age’s more useful for us business types. If people marry too early we can’t profit off their singleness. We must sell Nikes to boys, curlers for girls, and birth control to both. A wife who feels beautiful in her husband’s arm is no customer at all! Therefore, they must marry at a time that’s most profitable to us, about thirty when the wrinkles can no longer hide and the muscle starts to wane. At that point, we’d have made all we can off them, and someone else on the chain may pick the bill. How these seven sins rule! One can think forever on the issue of evil. I could be here too long ranting about evil!

It’d be good for me to speak of something good. Why does a common man of 2024 bring up society’s obsession with ages? Tell me, me, have you ever been hit on by a fifteen year old girl with the body of a woman? Yea, I have. See, it was the Fourth of July, 2022 perhaps, when out of the dark sat two silhouettes walked towards me sitting on the ground. They had the shape of women, long hair, breasts. They talked to me with the voice, hesitant, anxious, pretending to be assured that I’ve often heard at the university.

One was pushier than the other. She asked me, “Are you feeling lonely out here?”

“No.” I was sitting alone, but I was not lonely.

“Do you mind if we sit."

“Sure.” Inside, I was ecstatic. Read somewhere that if women went out of their way to sit by you, it meant they wanted you to do something with them. There was a saying, “First signal. First move.” Girl makes first signal. Man makes first move. These girls made a decent signal, and as we talked it became clear that they were interested in who I was. Plus, one of the silhouettes, the pushy one, sat quite close to me, uncomfortably so, but I enjoyed it. Being before my baptism, my heart pounded, and I sat, high, wondering if that day was the day

Then the pushy girl asked, “Where do you go to school?”

“Oh I—”

“Actually, what grade are you in?”

Grade? What grade? Maybe this was a mistake. I countered, stammering, “Grade? What grade are you two in?”

“We’re freshman,” both replied.

“Freshman where?”

“Springtown South. And you?”

Oh. I went to Springtown South when I was in high school. These were high schoolers, and—I wasn’t baptized then, but I was a Christian who thought I was baptized (long story), and I had so many questions for God. My instinct carried me away from the pot. Deflated, I said, “I’m a university student.”

Wait a minute. I think back now. Is my memory faulty? No, they got up and left after that, but orbited around enough where the one of their brothers, a chunky kid with one of those glowsticks who couldn’t have been older than twelve shook my hand and dragged me like he thought I wanted to pull a Lolita on his sister. Oh wait, they did keep sitting with me after I made the reveal. She, one of them, the blonde one talked to her brother, annoyed at how he tried to drag me. They would have only left if—and some weeks prior I saw those two, with the fireworks I matched enough of their features to know that these were the same women who waved at me from their van while on my walk—they would have only left if—

My heart. I’m glad to be a baptized Catholic, but see now? How is one supposed to live like Goyim when one has learned what every man since Genesis has known about attraction? Didn’t I know this when the girls at band crushed on our married band teacher? His name was literally Chad! He had Chud’s glasses, but his name was Chad!

I don’t think there’s been any signal as obvious to me besides the one I got that Fourth of July. It’s second only to the times when a dancer rubbed my shoe with her shoe and this girl at university who keeps saying “Hi Marc!” to me. Also in 8^th grade when a girl with freckles who always complimented my jokes stepped away from her friends to sit right next to me, a loser for a good minute. This is starting to sound like a humble brag now. The point is, the way these girls expressed attraction to me when they were fourteen is the same way they express attraction when they’re twenty-two.

And I have no idea why the CIA hasn’t given me more guff yet about knowing truths they also know. They’ve been to Laos. They’ve seen how the Hmong like to marry. Heck, my grandfather, a green beret who has likely trained with them—U.S. military equipment helped him marry my grandmother who just turned 18 when he was thirty.

I guess, this is just to say that marriage is the ultimate good which comes from attraction, whatever one’s attracted to. People, with Scripture and God, should be able to tell what is and isn’t ordered.

One would have to wonder why I’m even willing to reminisce about this. There’s a reason. No sin happened from it. I’m a virgin still. I just don’t know if I’m in a state to write the reason down. It may help with a kind of healing in my soul. Maybe it could help to describe. This is a disgusting line of thought. Is that my soul which speaks or my conditioning? I will describe what I thought when I first saw her.

When she opened the door, I saw a woman like Mary. I saw the mother of God, and no I did not see a fourteen-year-old girl. I only saw a young woman who with the body of a woman and the dress of a chaste soul, I wanted to marry. I wanted to marry this girl, because she was beautiful, and because a part of my soul found her beautiful because her face looked like an ornament of Mary that I looked at growing up during Christmas season to comfort myself during hard times. Mary would sit alight holding baby Jesus at the top of the tree. She looked over the living room with her clear white skin, blue eyes, and red-lipped smile, and me, an atheist, would look at her, the Mother of God because even if I hated God I couldn’t help but be drawn to God and God’s Mom. Sometimes, sneaking down just to ask Him if he were real to help me on some assignment, I’d look at Mary holding Jesus and receive comfort in the beauty of it. I saw the beauty of the ornament alive in the girl, so without knowing anything about her I was drawn.

Her name was Ciel. I learned weeks later after a series of smiles given from her to me, the ugly truth. Walking down the stairs at her father’s house, in the presence of her younger brothers, Ciel asked me to guess her age.

“You’ve got to be old enough to work. Makes me wonder why you still ask your Dad for an allowance. Aren’t you eighteen?”

“No.”

I was eighteen. I asked, “Seventeen?”

“No.”

“Sixteen.”

“No.”

“Fourteen.”

“No.”

I sighed. Well at least she wasn’t fourteen. Confident, I guessed, “Fifteen. That makes you fifteen, yea?” I wouldn’t have dated someone who was fifteen, but maybe she’d turn sixteen soon. Looking back at my thought process, I can only be glad for my baptism.

“Hmm, no.”

From here, everything went downhill. If she wasn’t eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fourteen, or fifteen, how old was she? She was a full-bodied woman, my height, with full red lips, and caramel-colored hair long enough to touch her lower back. She had to be lying. I watched anime, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility for me to be attracted to high schoolers, but if this girl wasn’t in high school, what in the world was she?

“You’re lying,” I said. “What’s your age.”

“Twelve.”

“… You’re twelve.”

“Yes!” She smiled.

I can only imagine what she thinks of me now, two years later. As for what she thought of me then, she seemed to have thought nothing of me. I don’t know. My entire concept of puberty was shattered in an instant, and having taken my eyes off the twelve-year-old girl who fooled me for a woman, I stepped down into the basement, and knelt on both knees before the couch. Later, one of Ciel’s brothers, Esau stopped by to talk about some Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs I was looking at. Though I never watched Thomas, I was glad to talk about Thomas knowing that Thomas was never fooled by full-breasted twelve-year-olds.

Adding insult to injury, Ciel was the pastor’s daughter. Ciel was the daughter of the pastor to a church of Evangelicals who at this time I was starting to become good friends with. The Pastor’s name was Lucius. Lucius had the jaw of Superman and the arms of a lumberjack. Where was Lucius when I was ogling Ciel? Where was he? Lucius tells me he can discern with the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit never told him that I liked the look of his daughter? I had to tell him to fulfill the Word of Christ.

And I know, the way I speak of this, it sounds like there’s a story to tell. There is, just one where all the pains are self-inflicted. Granted, I do look young for my age, and if I were a man of virtue then, I could have told Ciel back when we first had a chance to speak alone at Lucius’s house that I thought she was beautiful. Then she could have told me she was twelve, not interested, and I could have avoided gnashing my teeth for years.

All in all, maybe it’s just therapeutic to know how far I’ve come since then. It’s been four years. I’m no longer Evangelical. I’m Catholic. These days, out of a repentant heart, least as repentant as I could get for a girl I thought was as beautiful as the Mother of God herself, I pray for Ciel’s soul. I also praise God He never allowed her to become a Margaret to my Faust.

All vanity. Ciel smiled at me, kindly. It was the kind of smile where four years later, a man wonders if the she was actually attracted to you. Nonetheless, what matters is whether one sees these people in heaven with you. Attractions come and go, but whoever goes to heaven remains with God forever. Therefore, in eternity, whoever is with God will be those whom I will love. If a person burns in Hell, then it doesn’t matter if one has loved them on Earth or not. Going to heaven, we’ll only have those who lived for God.

Suppose in this respect, I do hope Ciel becomes a Catholic so her salvation’s more assured. Whether in this life or the next, I’d like to get things sorted out with her as well as all the people I have wronged. With Ciel, I haven’t wronged her in a visible way. It’s just, more than Ciel, I wronged everyone I knew at this time by acting as a man instead of being one.

It’s going to be 16:00 in twelve minutes. Good to know I can still write in the zone. I’ll take a break to drink some water and some bread. God help me.

X
12/03/24, Tuesday : The Boring Page

It’s times like this where I wonder if Providence has a play. The materials from Accounting I wished to study sits on a desk at home, so for these next three hours before my father drives us back at tonight I’ll journal.

I’m considering whether to write of a girl. No, I won’t. Every memory’s like a missed opportunity to die in sin. Concupiscence causes me teeter between gratitude and regret. I have to remind the devil, if I wanted to sin I could.

Yea, I could. I’m man enough to have returned to a natural state of abstinence. The Hovamol from the Poetic Eddas—Odin already told me how to woo.

Soft words shall he speak and wealth shall he offer

Who longs for a maiden’s love,

And the beauty praise of the maiden bright;

He wins whose wooing is best.

To think it was that easy to win a woman’s heart. Call a girl pretty without being needy, and flash the wealth. Today, with everyone being poor, the viking of modernity need only deal in soft words. So yea, if this is what this “god” says, I can praise beauty softly to receive the maiden’s love. But I dread the loss of heaven and fear the flames of hell. I’d rather zip my lips than drag another into death.

Alas, here writhes this turkey-brain. I fear the flames of hell but still I yearn for the touch of flesh. Reading over it, I yearn no longer. To put a thought on paper reveals how ugly the thought is. But it’s true. If I wanted to sin, I could. The pagan’s an ape because he’s puffed with pride. He feels joy over having what war or coin can buy. Fornications are easy. Keeping a lawful relationship is hard. And today, everything to do with love feels like a crime before God. Women shouldn’t walk without an escort, and men shouldn’t deal with them without thinking of their fathers. Can I blame either of these two? Do fathers even care when their daughters are passed from one man to another?

Lord, this makes me sad. Maybe, rather than that, the people around me don’t allow me to be happy. If I ignore what other people say and judge myself objectively … of my job it’s well enough to pay off my debt. I graduated early, and won’t have to start paying it back till August. If my future boss is telling the truth, which he is because to tell a lie’s a mortal sin in our faith, I can expect $75,000 to be my first-year salary, give or take. Since I’ll have six months of work before I start making payments—it adds to $37,500—add to $37,500 all my current assets and I should have enough to lower my debt to four figures.

Am I theory crafting my debt payments? Yes, I am, and objectively, drowning out the noise, I find that it’s possible for me to pay it off in one or two years so long as I give every paycheck back to Sallie Mae.

God willing, I’ll overcome the debt and my parent’s bickering. For all intents, my parents may have their own demons attached to them being Buddhist rather than Catholic. I’d trust their advice about applying to places like Target more if I knew more certainly that if a nuke were to hit out home, they’d be going to heaven rather than hell.

Lord, I have to apologize for discussing something as boring as debt and salaries. Jesus, if Eugenio can raise a four kids on a Knights of Columbus Field Agent salary, then in Your name I can raise myself on the salary he was paid on his first year selling insurance. I don’t even have to be that smart about it. Four kids don’t pay for themselves. Eugenio raised four kids working for the company! He raises eight now! If my brother Knight can has a salary good enough to raise eight children working as a mere salesman as my parents would put it if they could speak English+ like me, then this would be the opportunity I’ve been praying for all along! It just bothers me so much to hear every day, “Mark are you applying for internships … Mark, that’s entrepreneuring. You should start a business.”

Dad, are we listening to the same lecture? These people were decades outside of college! You’ve never started a business so you wouldn’t know, but some entrepreneurs spend years in the red until their margins turn green! So it’s cool when a business starts making money, and you tell me I should make a business just like them, but then you ignore the years where said business made no money and the owners had to keep day-jobs waiting at a no-name restaurant?

If I started a business you’d just complain about me wasting time because it doesn’t make any money! Also, I did start a business by the way and—wait this is exactly what’s happening isn’t it? Writing’s a business. I write. I make no money. I don’t know how long it’ll be until I’ve received enough profits to justify the opportunity cost of literally doing anything else. In the meantime, Pa’s always telling me about how I’m wasting my time, even though I’m doing what he’s been telling me to do regarding entrepreneurship.

I kind of wish my parents were more self-aware. Still, they’re probably too mind-broken from growing up in those concentration camps, so it is what it is. Also, a note, writing’s a terrible business, just a terrible one until God deems that what’s written is worth paying money for.

***

I’m still in Wilson. Just needed to separate my thoughts. The drama of my life could be worth a few cents, only, I don’t want to blather about getting friendly “hellos” from beautiful girls who I should be invisible to. I stick out like a sore thumb though. Maybe Naruto influenced me. He’s a ninja in an orange jumpsuit. I’m a businessman in a navy peacoat. He never dresses like a shinobi. I never dress casual. Maybe one day I’ll be Hokage. God wills what He will. This aside, whether I am memorable or not in looks, a girl ought to be aware of her effect on a man. I don’t blame them for not being aware, given how much society tries to remove the reality of male and female. It’s just, I’d rather have to keep myself from committing a mortal sin of imagination when I walk through the university and—I am speaking vaguely now. Excuse me.

Getting specific, I feel sexually harassed. Living in Minnesota as a Lao man, I’m little to begin with, and sitting eye-level with … I can’t. I wish to be married soon so I won’t have to deal with it. These girls are big, and though I know I could take them … veni Sancte Spiritus, Lord help me pass my exams. Free me, help me work, and, if I chance to meet a woman while paying off my loans, let me praise You for bringing her.

Me? Me, a handsome man? Please now, I don’t want to imagine how “No” means “Yes” with a push. The devil and his animals. They reject; they love more to relent, but this is an evil thing. Looking at these, I remember, painfully, each one was born from a man. I’m a man, so I will never know. What’s it like to grow with a dad who doesn’t care? Were their dads even allowed to care? Were they raised by the adulteress instead?

Excuse me, I speak in abstracts again. If we manage to make it, I’ll have to thank Ciel and her father, Lucius. Ciel lived in Lucius’s house. Thanks to them, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that every girl has a dad. Then, to see so many in a place where they’d really need Dad—so many parents are like animals today. Animals kick their young out when they’re grown, but man wasn’t made for that. A daughter belongs to her father’s house. A son remains until he finds a woman and leaves. A father shouldn’t be okay with throwing his sons or especially his daughters into the wilderness.

***

It’s about time I write about my day. This sleep has been the first time in a while where I went uninterrupted through eight hours. Unfortunately, I woke at the start of classes. Thankfully, my first class was on Zoom, so I listened in while showering and got to hear in bits from a rather industrious businesswoman about how her company, Quelp, was making Sci-Fi food reality by turning seaweed into food. When I got to dressing myself, the lecturer over the phone turned it over to questions. By the woman’s answers, I understood that entrepreneurship was a hard business.

I drove into Minneapolis with Dad. He got to hear some of the lecture from my phone. Told me to start a business. Apparently, he thought that was easy. It annoyed me a little, but I also understood he was trying to encourage me, albeit in a dysfunctional way.

At school, I hopped on another Zoom call, this time with my teammates from Business Communications. I was the first in to the call, and for some reason this girl kept making small talk until the rest of the team joined.

“Hi, Mark.”

“Hi, Lin.”

Drats, the conversation was so uncomfortable, I barely remember it. Sounds messed up to say, but I’ll be glad to be free from the temptation when the class ends. Yesterday, when walking up a fleet of stairs while staring at the steps so as to not slip, I heard her say, “Hi, Mark!” I looked up and around. Who said that? Then I saw her, Lin, walking down with two other girls. “Hi,” I replied. I didn’t say her name because my mind was focused on climbing stairs, but she passed and I had to wonder why anyone would bother saying “Hi” to me. Maybe I wondered more because Lin had the height and shape to smother me.

When the rest of the team joined, I was glad. After that, we worked a bit, made some plans about the presentation, and that was it. Then came Accounting and—why! The entire rest of my day was boring after that.

After Accounting, I went to Coffman Hall. It was Tuesday, and after eating a bowl of brisket at Chipotle, the hour was 14:00 so a part of me hoped to meet Lucius on the ground floor where he evangelized at a table by the bookstore, but being double-minded, hesitant, whatever one should call it, I paced around the upper hall where the piano was.

I brought him before the tabernacle, this Protestant, and told him I wanted to boink his daughter. Did he forgive me? Yea. Was he cheerful about it? Yea. I haven’t received a text from him this whole semester. What if he’s not okay with it anymore? What if he’s telling me to stay away? Does this have to do with Ciel or me preaching to him the Rosary the last time we met? I should be happy enough he never sent me to the police.

In hindsight, Lucius first met his wife when she was a teenager. That’s probably why he didn’t care when I told him about what I thought of Ciel. When I was pacing around, I didn’t think of that, so I settled on sitting on an armchair close to the piano and browsing Neocities.

A website I liked who hasn’t updated in a while updated and I browsed the rather confessionary thoughts of the author. Here, I drafted a response about going more to church and exercising to her. After this, I took a bus back to the West Bank, and came to the Wilson Library where I am now.

By God, there’s no way this page stays in the final draft. I’m already half a book in, and I already feel like doing something novel.

Wouldn’t a book like this be more interesting if Mark got a girlfriend? Ah, but then I’d have to do some unbecoming things which could be considered entertaining, but this would be entertaining to audiences embroidered in sin.

Ah, tomorrow, I am meeting with Luke. I have Luke to look forward to. It’s so boring, living in a bubble. I’m glad to get out. Maybe I’ll speak to him about his wife’s mid-life horses. Who knows, it might save his marriage.

I 11/13/24 : My name is Marc

II 11/14/24, Thursday : My Father

III 11/15/24, Friday : Speech to Text Adventures

IV 11/16/24, Saturday : The McDonald Revolutionaries

V 11/18/24, Monday : I am Turkey

VI 11/19/24, Tuesday : When gods play Ape

VII 11/20/24, Wednesday : A Just Inequality

VIII 11/26/24, Tuesday : A Woman’s Mid-life Horses

IX 11/29/24, Friday : Discourse on Chastity

X 12/03/24, Tuesday : The Boring Page

I
11/13/24 : My name is Marc

II
11/14/24, Thursday : My Father

III
11/15/24, Friday : Speech to Text Adventures

IV
11/16/24, Saturday : The McDonald Revolutionaries

V
11/18/24, Monday : I am Turkey

VI
11/19/24, Tuesday : When gods play Ape

VII
11/20/24, Wednesday : A Just Inequality

VIII
11/26/24, Tuesday : A Woman’s Mid-life Horses

IX
11/29/24, Friday : Discourse on Chastity

X
12/03/24, Tuesday : The Boring Page