It’s Friday, enjoy some art. Chris Tessmer has one hell of a sketch blog, great stuff in there.

I haven’t gotten a lot of entries for the Comic Book Death Pool. If you guys want to join, please do so by September 1st. If you have friends interested, let them know. I want to get a good group of entrants.

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I know I skipped a bunch of stories here. I might need to do another religion themed week in the future, just to fill in the gaps. I don’t want to do a back-to-back by any means, one week is enough.

After Confirmation I turned into the typical disenfranchised, angry, anti-religion loudmouth, the kind of guy that made fun of people with any sort of organized religion in their life. I danced around from Atheist to Agnostic to not acknowledging any classification, as if religion just didn’t matter.

My good friend Mormon Josh left college after sophomore year to go on his two year long mission. Josh was good people, although you can say being around the college crew affected him a bit – and not in the goody-good way Mormon’s like to be affected in. He struggled with it – his girlfriend and the alcohol and the parties. Sometimes he’d be fun, sometimes his drunken ass would go into Mormon rage, smiting himself as he broke down.

The decision to go on his mission was a conscious effort to find his religion by distancing himself from us godless types. I was obviously bummed, my other good friend Mickey was also leaving BU and I was the only person from the floor staying on campus – the RA job was too good to pass up. So with my two good friends leaving, everyone else going off campus and R and I on the outs, it was a shitty time – as I’ve said in past entries.

But now I’m home for the summer – R and I already broke up and I have come to terms with the fact that I’m essentially starting over my Junior year. I wrote Josh several times and never got a reply for him – I just assumed he was too busy or too godly to get back to me.

And then I got an email.

To paraphrase, he told me a story about a woman he “saved” while on his mission. She was a heroin addict – single mom with a kid – and his mission took her in and cleaned her up, got her back on her feet. The story was honestly quite touching and as I read it I kind of pumped my fist and did a little “Go Josh.”

And then there was the second half of the letter.

To paraphrase, again, Josh explained how the woman (the heroin addict with the bastard child, remember) reminded him of me. ME. It wasn’t said in a bad way – he said she was such a nice person, funny and compassionate, but she was just lost. You know. Like me.

I found it funny. Called up my friends, told them about it. Everyone laughed, silly brain-washed Mormon. Comparing his good friend to a heroin addict. I wrote Josh back and told him that I was proud of him. I informed him that R and I broke up (he was friends with both of us). I told him to keep doing the good work and maybe one day I’ll find myself again. It was all lighthearted fun, not mean-spirited at all. Josh and I used to always joke like that – he’d always laugh and tell me I was going to hell and I’d just sort of come back at him.

But this time he meant it – and despite my joking about it, it hurt.

I went to church that Sunday for the first time in years and felt nothing. My summer went on. And that’s the theme for next week, we’re going to get back on this 423 thing. For those that need a refresher, go here: A prelude to 423, 423, The Tipping Point, Breakdowns, Summer Money Attempt #1, Hooker Hand, Movie Memories, Sentimental Bullshit, Movie Making,

I don’t believe in hype, but I will say that next Friday’s story will most likely cause light bruising on one-sixty-fourth of the internet.