Mormonism is the dysfunctional family that I was adopted into. My family of origin is Skepticism, and is broad enough to include the deistic, agnostic and atheist varieties.
Thinking of my relationship to religion in these terms helps me to deal with it better, I think. When I think of Mormonism purely in institutional […]

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Made a few changes to the site design. I’m adjusting things on the fly, on the live site–I know this isn’t adhering to the best design or programming principles, but if I wait until I have the perfect development site, there wouldn’t be a mindonfire.com.
This time around, the major change is the […]

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I was driving around yesterday, coping with a bout of anger, depression, and general self-loathing, when Slumber from Bad Religion’s Stranger than Fiction album began playing on my shuffle:

so, you’re feeling unimportant,
‘cuz you’ve got nothing to say,
and your life is just a ramble,
no one understands you anyway
well, I’ve got a piece of news, […]

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I came upon the concept of “the strength of weak ties” in the book, Who Let the Blogs Out? : A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs by Biz Stone, self-proclaimed Genius.
The book itself is cioppino mix of everything from code snippets to advice to reflective essays. It’s a quick read, fun for […]

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Last week I went to a “National Day of Prayer Interfaith Breakfast.” I persuaded a couple of friends into going with me through promises of gnostic feminist insight and free food.
The U.S. National Day of Prayer happened to coincide with Cinco de Mayo, which wasn’t mentioned at all, and rememberance of the Shoa, the Holocaust, […]

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Yesterday, Jana got me a new old mountain bike for free on freecycle. It’s an older model, probably more heavy steel and less of these new-fangled light space-age alloys, but it spent several years as a rental on Catalina (it still has a City of Avalon business license sticker on it). I suppose […]

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This is the best site ever!

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It occurred to me that the so-called War on Terror is our Cold War. Al-Qaeda is like the Soviet Union–ideologically opposed to Us, completely other, as separate in their worship of a hateful, vengeful Allah (unlike the one most Muslims worship) as the Soviets were in their “godless Communism.” No one is safe, no […]

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It’s been a week filled with adventures of sorts:
1) A week ago, the kiddos and I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, an event that in retrospect makes me think of that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus shows Neo infinitely long racks of weaponry, except with books! We supported the […]

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