Atheists, drive by bb gun shootings, donuts, and a balloon

That summarizes my most interesting night at the Secular Student Alliance annual conference. I should clarify this adventure happened after the end of the final official event of the night, which was socializing at Buffalo Wild Wings. Which also means I and everyone else over the age of 21 were a bit inebriated during these shenanigans, which explains a lot of the situation.
I was going to write up what happened, but my friend Ryan, the protagonist of this adventure, has already done so in a hilarious fashion:

[…]A group of us were walking back to the dorms where we were holed up for the weekend, when someone with a couple of ranks in Knowledge:Local pointed out that there was an Insomnia Cookies a few blocks away.

“Oooo… Insomnia! We have to get some!” said Jen (who is not to be confused with Jenny), because she always gets nostalgic after a few drinks.

So we walk down the street, and as we approached the UDF o’er on the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk, this blue beater sedan slows down — CRACK — then speeds off.

I grab the side of my left leg.

“Uph. I’ve been shot.” I said. “Pretty sure it was just a BB gun though.”

Jen looks back and smiles, thinking that I was recounting one of my wild stories to someone else, unaware that one was happening right then, and that she was a character in it. [Jen Note: I so didn’t hear you say anything about a BB gun! That’s why I thought you were just joking around after tripping or something! D: ]

It felt like being cracked with a giant rubber band, like in high school we tied rubber bands to other rubber bands repeated the process again and again then tied knots in the end until we had some 30 foot rubber band to crack jokers with. The shot didn’t hurt that bad, and that terrified me. I learned that the more horrific the injury, the less it hurts. A shoulder dislocation feels several orders better than a Charlie horse.

[…]Anywho, since my friends had no real intention of stopping, I hobbled on for another two blocks or to Insomnia Cookies, but it was closed, just like how it’s not supposed to be. We were all pretty depressed. Then whoever had Knowledge:Local pointed out there was this stomp-ass donut shop a few blocks away. I look at my leg and don’t see a giant blood stain, so I hobble along.

We get to the donut shop. I buy peanut-coated donut for $0.95. It was totally clutch. I ask if they have a bathroom, they send me to one in the back of the kitchen. I drop trou to get the lay of the land.

Sho’nuff, there was a hole in my leg, right where the hole in my pants was. It seemed bigger than a BB; in fact, it looked to be the right size as a .22, and that’s bad. There was bleeding from the surface, but it was a slow creep, like a scraped knee, or a road rash. There was blood on my underpants, but interestingly enough, the only holes were the ones placed there by the manufacturer intended for my legs. Since the shot went through my pants, but not my underpants, it became clear to me that it had to be a BB, because they don’t sell any bulletproof shit at K-Mart.

You really need to read the rest of it. It involves ambulances, the Saddest Photo Ever taken by Hemant, me being generally worthless after four drinks, and Jessica Ahlquist’s adorable idea.

I have to give it to Ryan for staying cool during the whole situation. I would have been crying instantly and liveblogging the whole thing. Instead I was tipsily tweeting cryptic messages that nearly gave Lyz Liddell of the SSA staff an ulcer, asking people to be Meat Shields for the Important Bloggers, and whining about how I really wanted Insomnia Cookies. I am apparently a horrible friend when drunk.

Dan Savage is an evil genius

From Think Progress:

Sex columnist Dan Savage has offered a new threat to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum: If Santorum continues to attack gays and lesbians during his campaign, Savage will expand his “google problem” by redefining “Rick.” Savage led a campaign to redefine “Santorum” in 2003 after Santorum compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia. Other people named Rick chimed in to urge Santorum to heed Savage’s threat.

A challenge

FearBlandness tweets:

I challenge you to incorporate PZ, ponies and yourself into a post. I guarantee you’ll have a tenfold increase in donations!

Challenge accepted.

Drawn in MS Paint with the touch pad on my laptop.

NOW WHERE’S MY MONEY

This is post 44 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

How to get people to quit using homeopathic medicine

From SMBC:Come on Zach, you know this is wrong. The process of dilution is obviously very important in how the water molecules establish memory. It not just about decreasing the frequency of something. You must do the right water magi-er, mechanisms. Mechanisms. Or something.

Now, if we threw all of the homeopaths in the ocean…

Meta Blogging Moment: I had a little buffer time, so I was checking my webcomics. I noticed the newly updated SMBC was not, in fact, this SMBC. I suddenly couldn’t remember how I found this particular comic. Did I click a link on twitter? No. Did someone email me it? No. Was it on facebook? No. I was convinced I had finally lost my mind. Why in the world would I choose a random old SMBC comic to blog about in the middle of the night, when I had no prompting to look up something about homeopathy?

Then my friend IMed me again, and I realized he had sent me the link.

Sleep, I needz you. I needz you now.

This is post 43 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Q&A Quickfire Part 2!

More questions!

What was the best moment of your elementary school days?

The first thing that popped into my head was in fifth grade, I won a contest to give a speech at our graduation. But for my speech I wrote a rhyming poem that included references to all the books we read, field trips we went on, activities we did, etc. I was mighty proud of myself. I wonder if I still have it somewhere… it’s probably buried in my parents’ basement.

The second thing that popped into my head was the day we filled one of our classrooms with an inflatable planetarium. I was in love with astronomy in elementary school, so that was pretty much the greatest day ever.

Have you ever been within 5-10 minutes of the next 30-minute mark without an idea about which to write? Did you freak out, and how did you handle the situation?

Actually, I’ve been doing surprisingly well this blogathon. I’ve been an hour to two hours ahead of schedule all day. In the past I’ve had many frantic moments like the one you describe, were I flail and resort to posting picture of lolcats. …Of course, there’s still the potential for that to happen. The roughest hours are remaining.

Coke or Pepsi?

I used to adamantly say Pepsi, mainly because there was a Pepsi factory in my home town so I was really used to it. But then I went to Purdue for college, which was a Coke-only campus. Now I just don’t give a damn and try to drink both less.

What kind of music do you have hammering in your ear when desperatly writing a paper or a blogpost at 3 a.m. on the night before it is supposed to be ready?

Honestly I never listen to music when writing. That may seem weird, but I’m really easily auditorily distracted. Unless it’s lacks lyrics, I’ll lose focus instantly. And most of the music I have has lyrics. This is probably why I don’t really like listening to podcasts or YouTube videos. I basically have to drop everything to focus on them.

The one exception I have to this is when I’m coding. In that case, I put all of my Muse albums on repeat and program away.

I’m new in this town. Where do I meet hot nerdy women such as yourself. I’m a software engineer and work is all sausage.

I can’t speak for all women, but I only leave my basement to go work in the lab. You’re doomed, sorry.

Again, feel free to leave more questions for a final round. I’ll probably be delirious by the time I answer those, so make them good!

This is post 38 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

A guest appearance

Jason: *starts chatting on Google video chat*
Me: Who’s that? I didn’t give you permission to chat with anyone.
Jason: Don’t you recognize his voice?

John: Who’s that?
Me: That’s Hemant! …From Friendly Atheist?
John: Never heard of him.
Me: Ouch.
Hemant: I’m going to go back to taking off my shirt now, bye.

No, there’s really not more context than that.

This is post 29 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Q&A Quickfire!

Blogathon is pretty much the one time a year I check my ancient formspring.me account. So here’s a quickfire answering some random questions from the last 12 months:

Have you ever played any Pen and Paper RPG’s if so, which?

I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons twice after my friends guilted me to no end. The first time was mainly spent drawing up character sheets for 4 hours. The second time two of the guys in the group spent the whole time trying to have their characters rape mine. IT WAS A BLAST!

Now you know why I only played D&D twice.

How do you sleep?


Actually, quite crappily. It usually takes me a long time to fall asleep, and I’ll wake up a couple of times every night. I used to sleep walk when I was a little kid, so maybe that has something to do with it.

How do you play on clue Plum, White, Green, Peacock, Scarlet, Mustard


Pfft, Scarlet, no question. Professor Plum if she’s taken. Yes, it totally matters.

Would you rather have sex with Ronald McDonald or the Kool-Aid man?


Oh god, terrifying clown or someone obnoxiously yelling “Oh yeeeaaaah” the whole time? ..Ronald McDonald. I can close my eyes; it’s harder to close my ears.

Custard cream or bourbon biscuit?

I don’t even know what either of these things are. Is this British? Is this like spotted dick? Heh heh heh, spotted dick.

finish this sentence “kids these days…”

…will in ten years be complaining about kids these days.

If you have any additional random mindless questions, feel free to leave them in the comments so I have something to blog about at 3am, haha.

This is post 22 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.