 Welcome, weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar, and this is a Chamber of Comments episode where I enter the emails that I've been sent recently. Sometimes it's just a nice, complimentary email that I receive. Sometimes it's heart-wrenching. Sometimes it's asking for advice. Sometimes it's a complaint, which we have in this particular episode. You can email me anytime, though, about anything at darranadweirddarkness.com. Darran is D-A-R-R-E-N. And your emails always come directly to me. I don't have an assistant. I don't have a service looking over them before they get to me. I get all of them, and I try to read every one of them. And more often than not, I will reply to those emails, assuming that it's appropriate to do so, here in the Chamber of Comments. So again, you can email me, darran, D-A-R-R-E-N at weirddarkness.com. In today's Chamber of Comments, I actually want to start not with an email that I received, but an actual physical letter, which is so rare to receive nowadays. But it just means that much more, because I know somebody spent the time to do it. And the person's name is Robert. He sent me an email. I'm so used to saying email. He sent me in the mail a note saying, hello, Mr. Daran Marlar. I have sent this month, I have sent this money. I'm having a hard time reading his writing. This, okay, I have sent this money order as a donation for the Hope in the Darkness campaign I missed the other evening of the live screen. I hope and pray that it is helpful for somebody struggling with problems. I know how it feels when, I know how it feels when your own mind works against itself. And that's Robert in West Virginia. Robert, I'm sorry, I butchered reading your letter. You would think I would be more used to that after after reading my wife's writing, which is ORED. But Robert sent me a money order for $10.50, which was very generous. Robert, thank you very much. He did get it to me after the overcoming the darkness campaign was over. So I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it. But since it's all going to the same place anyway, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that $10.50 and apply it to what I give the next time I make a donation to those organizations with the money that I receive from the Weird Darkness store and the Weird Darkness coffee sales. I don't think I've mentioned it in a while, but all profits from both the Weird Darkness store, like when you buy t-shirts and tote bags and coffee mugs and buttons and all that other stuff, any profits I receive from that and any profits I receive from the sales of Weird Darkness coffee, I go ahead and every month donate to those organizations. So that's not part of the actual October campaign. I do that just on the side throughout the rest of the year. So Robert, that's what I'm going to do with your donation. Thank you very much. I really, really appreciate your heart. I also, once in a while, will read reviews from Apple Podcasts here in the Chamber of Comments. And that's what I'll do here real quick. One person, Shrek San, said, Please put more kids say the creepiest things. This podcast is amazing. Well, thank you very much, Shrek San. I appreciate that. I'll have to look to see if there's more of those kids say creepy things stories. Mistfall said, by the way, these are all five-star reviews. Mistfall said, Accept audio. I think what Mistfall means is exceptional audio and that's okay. You know what? That five-star review kind of clears that up. So thank you. And then Darkness321 also a five-star review said, Great, I love this podcast. Hail the great Cthulhu. I don't know if he's referring to me or not, or if he just wants to give his Lord and Master Cthulhu some kudos either way. And then I got a three-star review from Hannah Benani. And this was actually a complaint, even though I got a three-star review on it. They say pro-life sponsor was a deal breaker. I've listened for about a year, started from the oldest episode. When I heard the commercial about Save a Baby in a 2019 episode, I unfollowed. I won't support podcasts that are working together with pro-life sponsors. That's my choice. Interesting stories, but a lot of self-promos sponsors. Well, Hannah Benani, it's interesting that you say that's my choice because this is actually a pro-choice thing that's on my website. They never were an actual sponsor. I was just sharing the information out there so people would know that it's available. And what I mean by pro-choice is that they don't provide abortions. What they do is they give you an option for when it comes to going forward if you find yourself in a crisis pregnancy. There are, of course, very few decisions that you can go with. You can have the baby and keep it. You can have the baby and give it up, or you can abort the baby. The option line is optionline.org. They give you the option. They also raise money. I think this is what I was doing it for mostly. They raise money to give, would-be mothers, a free ultrasound so they can see what's in them to make a more informed decision. That's all it really is. They say that about 80% of women who see the ultrasound usually choose life, be it either keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption. One of the things that is really cool about option line, though, which I think is very important, is when somebody is pro-life, they will say, you need to keep the baby, but they don't give that woman options on how to go through with that. What if the woman does want to keep the baby? Then suddenly she has all these expenses about how to keep the baby, how the food, the diapers, the clothing, the room and board. Option line helps them with all of that. It's not just them saying, okay, you've had your baby now, off with you, go off and do your thing. They actually follow up and follow the mom and make sure that they're taken care of. That's the reason that I put them there, because they are a little bit different than many other pro-life agencies. I really see them as a pro choice agency because they are giving you choices, which is the whole point. If that still irks you, well, I'm sorry. I'd rather have a pro-life thing than a pro-death thing, so there you go. Richard sent me an email saying, Darron, I enjoy the Weird Darkness podcast ever since I found it on Spotify. I want to extend a special thanks for closing your podcast with the word of God. Everyone, whether of the same faith or not, needs some light in this darkened and unsure world. Thank you so much for informing new converts about the reality of spiritual warfare, because most churches and pastors don't teach those of new faith how to defend themselves from the attack of the devil. A fellow weirdo in Biblical faith signed Richard. Thank you, Richard. I really appreciate that. It's interesting, I never really intended to create a separate podcast, Church of the Undead, and I do talk a little bit about my faith here in the Weird Darkness, a little bit more than usual recently. I used to share it a little, now I'm sharing it quite a bit, and I have to wonder maybe that's why my downloads are down now. I have noticed the last good month, month and a half, that the number of downloads each month is going down. So last month it was down 10% from the previous 30 days, and then it was 12%. Right now I'm down 18% less, 18% fewer downloads than 30 days ago. And the only thing that I can see is maybe I'm being a bit more open about my faith, and that's turning people off. And if that's the reason that I'm getting fewer downloads, well, then fine. That's just the way it's going to be, that's God's will, and I'll just move forward with it. If it's not, and it's a glitch in the system that I want to know, and I do have the folks over at Spreaker where I host my podcast, looking into it just to make sure, but thank you very much, Richard. I appreciate that. Mark sent me an email. He actually did a screenshot of his Spotify listening for the year. He said, just wanted to say thank you for helping me make it through a night at work. I've been listening since 2017. You are my favorite podcast. Thank you. I appreciate that. According to his Spotify, he spent 6953 minutes with his top podcast, which was Weird Darkness. And that is just amazing. I ended up getting another, another listener contacted me and they had over 13,000 minutes in their podcast that they listened to over the over the year, or excuse me, not 1313,000 minutes, 13 days worth. So however many minutes that I got to do that, I got to do the math on that 13 days times 24 hours times 60 minutes would be 18,000 over 18,000 minutes. This, this girl ended up listening. But and I thought, oh my gosh, she's practically doubled everything that anybody else has done. And then just yesterday, I got a message on, was it on, on Instagram, I think from Jenna and she, she did a screenshot of hers. She had listened, I kid you not, for 24 days throughout the year, 24 days. So 24 times times 24 hours times 60 minutes, 34,500 and she actually more than this, but almost 35,000 minutes she listened to Weird Darkness. And I worked it out, it's 6% of the entire year. That's awake time, sleep time, eat time, pooping time, 6% of the entire year she listened to Weird Darkness. I have never received that kind of compliment in my life. That is just amazing. Jenna, if you're listening now, you rock. And I also think maybe you need some mental help because you're spending way too much time with me. But goodness gracious, that is just amazing. Well, if you guys want to email me and be in the Chamber of Comments in the future, all you got to do is send me an email, Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N at WeirdDarkness.com. That's Darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Have a great evening and we'll see you in the podcast, Weirdos. God bless.