May 2020 archive

Not like I didn’t actually see that coming.

“I wonder what I’ll write about in my blog today—”

Check the local section of my Facebook and see that people are talking about how a cult is apparently operating here under the “guise” of a local church. You literally could not make this up if you tried. What seems to be the most hilarious about all of this is the fact that they have “enough” of a Facebook presence that people are leaving them negative reviews on Facebook about the cult’s interactions with various people as they attempt to recruit. So this is essentially helping them blow up on social media. I suppose this is actually something good about the reach that Facebook has, for all the negative things that you can say about it. (And this is the guy that I’m talking about, by the way. This is allegedly the founder of the cult or something. I am just now reading about it.) I just now saw all of this begin to “cross” my Facebook timeline.

In the interim, I’ve been looking for things to “pad” our gaming collection, especially since Bub’s birthday is at the very end of next month. So stumbling across this information was actually very surprising, if not a bit flabbergasting, because who honestly expects an actual cult to spring up in their town, regardless of the size? I know that I’ve joked that the hold that theistic religions have on some people is akin to the holds that cults have on some people, but now there seems to be an actual cult… in my city. Sure, it may not be geographically close to me since my city is not small, but now there seems to be an actual cult in my city.

You don’t ever see cults spring up in Satanism, although theists would probably actually regard Satanism as a cult (even though it is atheistic satanism, the complete rejection of theism, particularly Abrahamic theism).

Since I have the chance to post before bed…

I would be gaming more if I didn’t have… well, migraines. But the good news is that I see my neurologist at the end of the month to get refills on the medications of mine that need refills, and I tell him which medications of mine are no longer therapeutic and no longer work in the hopes that my medication regimen can be altered to make them more therapeutic. I already know that for reasons that I will be mentioning in this blog later, as soon as we can have it ordered and insurance approves it, I will be wearing an ambulatory EEG — my goal is to wear it “until we catch what we need to catch”, so I’m hoping that insurance actually lets me do that. I’ve never done an ambulatory EEG, and what we need to come up I don’t want to have hide.

I’m hoping that the pandemic doesn’t stall insurance approval of that request, and that my new Medicaid HMO actually approves that request. There’s also the possibility of having another CT scan done with contrast, which my neurologist had been wanting my old Medicaid HMO to do for awhile that they kept arbitrarily denying for the most asinine of reasons even though the first CT scan that was done under my first neurologist actually found something that she (and now, my new neurologist, since she decided not to come back to work after maternity leave) wanted to follow up with… I mean, if the initial CT scan actually found something one might think that insurance would approve a CT scan with contrast to find out more about it, and quite possibly subsequent scans to follow it, but my old Medicaid HMO was arbitrarily denying all subsequent requests for more than the initial scan, which was just absurd. So I guess we will see how this goes if my current neurologist decides to put in a request for another scan, assuming he didn’t give up there.

In the interim, I have noticed that we are actually running low in space on our microSD card, although I don’t want to take that out because our Animal Crossing game is on that and I don’t want to run the risk of corrupting our save data given that we have gotten fairly far in that game. I have heard horror stories…

Branching off from Hexennacht: moving forward.

In case you need to know what Satanic Panic is: here
In case you need to know what Hexennacht is: here

One of the things that I wanted to take the time to touch on, as someone who gradually “came out” in her blog as a Satanist (affiliated with The Satanic Temple, at that), is that even though we may have, comparatively speaking, made strides toward being more safely and easily being able to declare our religious affiliations in some places — or lack thereof, depending on how you want to word them — it can still be dangerous to “out” yourself as a religion that is not the majority religion, especially under the Trump Administration (and especially if it becomes clear through whatever means that you are LBGT, or as I have sometimes worded it, “not an able-bodied, white-passing man”). Outing yourself as a Satanist is perhaps the diciest of all, and it can potentially have repercussions in child custody cases and job applications if it is revealed in the former or disclosed in the latter. One word of advice, though: you do not have to disclose your religious affiliation on a job application, even if the interviewer asks… and for them to “require” that is illegal.

However, plenty of divorced or separated parents — and I mean plenty — have fought over the most banal of religious issues as they pertain to their child or children, so for one parent to be outed as a Satanist, or volunteer the information that they are one, is pretty much analogous to throwing a hand grenade into the proceedings if you ask me… at least assuming that both parents are active participants in their children’s lives and are litigating with the intent to be able to have an equal say in the upbringing of said children’s lives. Sometimes it is actually court-ordered that one parent is to be the parent that has “final decision-making say” in the religious instruction of the children (or, conversely, if this becomes something that it is clear that the parents will never agree on, that both parents are forbidden from making their children “active, registered participants” in their religious denomination… which basically means that they can not baptize them or enroll them). However, for one parent to be the individual that is granted that final decision-making say is only generally done when the child (or children) have had a history of being brought up in that religion so that they can continue to be brought up in it to give them the continued regularity of that religion’s influence, especially when their lives will be shifted with the divorce or separation of their parents. Unless, of course, it’s Satanism. And then it’s, like I’ve said, like throwing a really judgmental hand grenade into the proceedings nearly all of the time because of nearly everyone’s misconceptions as to what Satanism entails.

And yet perhaps it is the most ironic of all that Satanists are generally the least judgmental and pushy.

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