I’m going to NYC for a magazine photoshoot!

Please excuse me while I get some stereotypically girly glee out of my system:

SQUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!…Okay, I’m still insanely excited, so forgive me while I flail for a post. I was contacted by More Magazine about doing an interview for their piece on “Young Feminists.” More is an American woman’s lifestyle magazine targeted towards the 40+ demographic (not to be confused with the UK’s More! Magazine, which I’ve been told is a somewhat trashy fashion/gossip mag). Eleven different “up and coming” feminists under the age of 30 have each been interviewed for the special piece, including yours truly. I agreed to do the interview before I found out that they were flying us all to New York City for a professional photoshoot.

If you’ve hung around here for a while, you’ll know I have a horrible fascination with America’s Next Top Model. It’s a terrible show, but something about watching girls be ridiculous and catty without personally being a part of it is extremely addictive. Not to mention some shoots do produce pretty cool photos, and watching Tyra Banks’s newest insanity while screaming at the TV with my roommate is oddly fulfilling.

…I may or may not have watched all fourteen seasons. *shifty eyes*

So finding out I’m being flown to New York for a professional photoshoot is a bit of a fantasy of mine, a fantasy I never thought would actually happen since 1) I’m not exactly fashion model material and 2) Even if I was, I really have no interest in being a professional model. But to get to do it for a day is frankly awesome.

It didn’t really dawn on me how this is a “real” photoshoot until I started getting more information. They’re doing my hair and makeup. I don’t even wear makeup. I don’t want to be dolled up to the point where I’m unrecognizable – that would be kind of ironic for a piece on feminism – but I’m still excited. I’ve blogged before how one of the big reasons I don’t do makeup is just because I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’m pretty stoked to see what I’ll look like when someone actually does a nice job.

But reality really sank in when they asked me for my sizes and measurements because I’m going to have a wardrobe. WTF. A wardrobe! I don’t know if this caused me more excitement or anxiety. I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal, and I hate clothes shopping. I’ve always joked that I’d love to have a professional pick out clothes for me, but then it dawned on me that I didn’t even know what my sizes were.

I mean, I know how tall I am, and my shoe size… But pants? Uh, 10-ish depending on the brand? “Long” isn’t a legitimate measure for length? What, you want it in inches? You think I shop somewhere nicer than Old Navy? Shirts can range from small to extra large depending on how boob friendly they are. And a dress size? The last time I bought a dress was four years ago when I was two cup sizes smaller, so who knows if that’s accurate.

Anxiety aside, I know it’ll be ridiculously fun. My parents are just happy to get some professional photos of me out of it. I’m going to be thinking of all the stupid ANTM in jokes and “tips” the whole time. Smeyes! Ugly pretty, not ugly ugly! Find the light! Fierce!

Vanessa (roommate and ANTM mocking buddy): I still think you need someone recording the whole thing, it’d be hilarious
Me: It would be! Unfortunately I don’t have a camera crew, and I think my brother and sister-in-law actually have jobs, lol. I’ll make sure to take lots of photos and recount it in its full hilarity
Vanessa: Oh darn. That’s too bad because you could have used it as an application for the next season of ANTM
Me: Rofl, that would be awesome
Vanessa: Yeah, and everyone would want you to win because you’d be the token plus size girl
Me: Yeah, me and my fatty size 10 pants*, hehe
Vanessa: lol

The one downside? Three years of screaming at the TV and thinking “I can totally do that! How hard can it be?!” will finally be put to the test. Uh oh.

So, I can’t wait. I’ll definitely document the experience and post about it afterwards, as it’s sure to be interesting. And I’ll let you know when the actual magazine comes out! At the very least, you can cut out my photo and slap it on your wall so I can pretend I’m something more than a D-list internet celebrity for a day, haha.

*Yes, size 10 is considered plus size on ANTM. I wish I were joking.

I’m coming to New York City!

I’ll be in the Big Apple from Wed, August 18th to Wednesday, August 25th – yep, that’s the new travel destination I hinted at earlier! I absolutely can’t wait! I’ll be busy with something super exciting on the 18th and 19th – you’ll find the exact details why later today when I have enough time to properly squee*. This cruel teaser post is for three things:

1. What awesome things do I have to see in NYC? I’ve never been there before. My brother and sister-in-law live in Brooklyn and are prepared to show me neat places, but I’m still open to suggestions.

2. Since invariably someone will ask me this whenever I’m traveling…If I have any readers in/near NYC that want to meet for a pub night, now’s your chance to speak up in the comments. Please let me know which nights (20th through 24th) do or do not work for you. It’ll be somewhere in Brooklyn or Manhattan, depending on what works for people.

3. If anyone know how to hook me up with a ticket for the Daily Show or Colbert Report, I’ll give you my undying love/immortal soul/one million internet points. Not just people with connections – tips on finding a ticket are appreciated. I’m dying to go, and I’m willing to exploit boobquake for a seat if necessary (“But Colbert Report staff, you talked about me on the show! Surely you can sneak me in? *puppy eyes*”)

*If you’re a friend who knows what it is, please humor me by not ruining my dramatic suspense in the comments :P

I’ve become a bit of a world traveler lately

I didn’t realize how much traveling I’ve done until my dad pointed it out to me the other day. Sometimes I take for granted how many awesome travel experiences I’ve had – not many people get to escape their country or even their state, but I’ve been all over the place. And by age 22!

Because I’m a nerd, here’s a nice image of my travels. Red represents places I’ve lived, green represents places I’ve physically been in but didn’t actually do anything special there (aka, drove through/changed flights there), and blue represents places I visited with a purpose.
Some random observations:

  • I’ve only lived in two states. I lived in Illinois until I turned 2, and our house was about 10 minutes from where I grew up in Indiana, so I’m not sure if that even counts. And I only went to college an hour and a half away from home.
  • I’ve visited five foreign countries – Mexico, the Bahamas, Greece, Italy, and Vatican City. Our plane stopped in France for a couple hours, but I’d love to go back actually do something there. Well, I’d love to go back to any part of Europe. It was awesome when I was 12, and I’m sure I’d appreciate it even more now.
  • Despite living here, apparently I avoid the rest of the Midwest like the plague. Notice the green circle of states that I have driven through to actually get somewhere cool. And the only reason I’ve been to Kentucky and Ohio is because awesome Secular Student Alliance stuff has happened there in the last year.
  • Going off of that, it’s sort of mind boggling to me how I haven’t visited some places. How have I never been to Canada? Or Wisconsin?! How the heck did I hit up Greece and Alaska before places I could drive to in a couple of hours?
  • Almost all of my domestic traveling took place not only during college, but thanks to college. The only states I had been to prior to going to college were Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Florida. For example, here’s a map of the reasons why I traveled to each state. Blue is for a biology conference/field work, green is for grad school visits, red is for atheist related stuff (yes, I traveled within IL and IN for that), and purple is just for pleasure. You can see that while I enjoyed my travels, the vast majority were not just for fun and were either partially or fully funded by scholarships, my lab, universities, or blog readers (yay TAM!). I’m very lucky indeed.
  • Speaking of being very lucky, in a month my map will have to be updated again. I’ll be living in Seattle, so Washington state will join the places that I have lived in. This weekend I’ll be visiting St. Louis, MO, so then I will have properly “visited” it. And later this month I’ll be flying to a state I’ve never visited before for something super exciting – but you’ll find out about that soon!

Are any of you big travelers? Have you visited or lived in any especially awesome places? Where are you dying to go?

Oh, and since invariably when I talk about traveling someone asks “When are you going to visit _____?!”… Convince someone to help fund my trip and I’d be happy to come talk to your local godless group. I know, positively shocking that grad students aren’t rolling in the dough. ;)

Come see me at St. Louis Skeptics in the Pub!

If I have any readers near St. Louis, MO, I’ll be in town soon! This Saturday (August 14th) I’ll be speaking at The Skeptical Society of St. Louis’s Skeptics in the Pub about Boobquake and its aftermath. It starts at 7pm and is being held at Jack Patrick’s, which is at the intersection of 10th and Olive in downtown St. Louis. We’ll also be hanging around for some drinks afterward, so it should be fun!

There’s a meetup.com event here. I hope to see you guys there!

My super secret spy mission to a Focus on the Family event

Friday night I embarked on a top secret mission with Hemant of Friendly Atheist (who has his thoughts on our adventure here). Hemant brought the event to my attention. Because I like him so much and I’m a bit of a masochist, I agreed to tag along. We headed to Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL for the Focus on the Family Celebrate Family Tour:If you’re not familiar with FotF, you should be tipped off by the fact that “Family” is in their name. I’ve ranted about them here before – about them calling Harry Potter witchcraft, spreading misinformation about gay parenting, and wasting money on misleading pro-life Super Bowl ads. I’m not exactly a fan of this conservative Christian organization, but I was willing to listen for a night out of curiosity and the desire for blog fodder.

Hemant and I had some fun hyping this up in our minds. …Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a spy mission since anyone could attend and when we signed up we used our real names. Yeah, awesome spies. But I still had the Mission Impossible theme song playing through my head, and we even made up aliases. I was his wife (woo, take that fangirls!) who was trying to show my heathen husband why Christianity was so awesome. We picked 3/14 as our anniversary because we’re nerds and that’s the only date we could remember.

We later discovered we were terrible spies because 1) A good Christian woman would have taken her husband’s last name, 2) We didn’t have wedding rings, and 3) I know diddly poop about acting like a Christian. I also tried to fit in by wearing my Sunday’s best, but I later realized the new Christian fashion is all about capris. Seriously, every woman there was wearing capris. I think this was just a ploy to get me into a skirt for the first time in years.

Proof for the skeptical. Also, yay Christ and his kingdom.

Hey, at least we were smart enough to take Hemant’s car. My Darwin Fish, Obama sticker, and Republicans for Voldemort sticker probably would have given us away.

Anyway.

I’m not going to spend time discussing certain Christian tropes that you hear all the time (“It’s not about you, it’s about God,” “God saved me from death! …but not from breaking my legs,” etc). 1) I’ve discussed them before, and 2) I can discuss them later – they’re not exactly specific to this particular event. So even though many things had me facepalming, I’ll save them.

The event had about 1,000 people in attendance. It opened with FotF President Jim Daly sharing some personal stories and explaining the different programs that FotF organizes. FotF is known for its rabid pro-life and anti-gay marriage stances, so I was impressed by how much good they actually are doing (or at least attempting to do). I wasn’t aware that FotF was so active in encouraging adoption* or providing marriage counseling (though we could debate how useful Christian counseling is over getting counseling from a psychologist…).

*(An aside on the adoption thing. Apparently one of the higher-up officials with the Colorado adoption agency, a Dr. Sharon (missed her last name), told FotF that “The best homes for these kids are Christian homes” and wished there were more of them. This may have been said in confidence, but wow. Kind of not a good thing if a government employee is viewing a certain religion as superior when deciding who gets to adopt children.)

I have to give them props for being aware of this problem – people not knowing about their good works. They mentioned it several times throughout the night, and stressed the idea that “If we want people to believe in Christianity’s message, we need to show them the actual good it’s doing.” Again, we could debate if that message is true or not, but I’m all for Christians being less hypocritical when it comes to being moral/doing good works.

Some of the stuff he said was definitely silly though. Apparently 9 year olds are never supposed to say “no” to their parents. Yep, train your children to be good little unthinking drones! Oh, and Nick at Night is horrible television for your child to be watching. That explains why I turned out the way I did. Thanks a lot, I Love Lucy.

The main part of the program was with Dr. Emerson Eggerichs of Love and Respect Ministries and his wife Sarah (…is it bad that this makes me think of the Ministry of Love from 1984?). They mostly discussed the following quote from Ephesians 5:22-33:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything… 33However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Of course, when I say “they,” I mean Emerson did almost all of the talking while Sarah just sat there and looked pretty. I’m not sure why she was even there, other than so they can say “Look, we’re progressive and including women in our discussions!” …Except not really.

Emerson’s main message was that this passage wasn’t about submission, but about the different ways men and women communicate. He claimed women desire to be loved, and men desire to be respected. This claim was “supported” by a poll FotF did of its members – not exactly a scientific study of all men and women. During conflict, when women feel unloved they respond with disrespect, and when men feel disrespected they respond by being unloving. This starts what he refers to as the “crazy cycle” where a fight will just escalate until, apparently, someone realizes the Bible is telling them to stop.

While I appreciate the attempt to say this isn’t about submission (but not some of his pot shots at feminists), it’s still just replacing one stereotype about men and women with another. Great, women don’t have to “submit” to men – but we’re hyper emotional beings that communicate completely differently. He even referred to women as having “Pink glasses, pink hearing aids, and pink megaphones.” Next time someone doesn’t understand me, I’ll try to put away the pink megaphone, I guess.

This part of the program got kind of old after a while – Emerson just basically repeated the same thing for an hour. But then we got to see the comedian Jeff Allen perform. He was actually really funny – we were a bit doubtful at the beginning what a “Christian comedian” would be like. Some of his jokes were about God or religion, but they were ones anyone would find amusing, even a couple of atheists.

I should say, he was really funny most of the time. At the end of his act he felt the need to lay the evangelizing on thick, and tell a serious story about how finding Christ saved his life, etc etc. It wasn’t lame because it was about Jesus or Christianity – I was eating up the rest of his skit. It just…wasn’t funny. His job was to be a comedian, so it just came off as totally awkward to get up on his soap box. It would have been equally awkward if a comedian started going off on how awesome atheism is without actually making any jokes.

Not to mention this was the one moment of the night someone decided to take pot shots at atheists. I made sure to take some quick notes on what I learned about myself:Yep, the whole atheists are depressed canard. It never gets old, does it?! Hemant and I decided we weren’t living up to our atheist standards, and we needed to angst and shoot up heroine more. Or something like that.

There were a couple of general things that struck me as odd, from the perspective of an outsider looking in:

1. Well, feeling like such an outsider. Even though no one knew Hemant and I were a couple of atheists (I promise we were respectful through the whole thing), I still felt out of place. As someone who was not brought up in a Christian household, there are just so many cultural things I don’t know about. Certain phrases or ideas seemed to elicit unanimous mumbled praise from the audience… usually the phrases that I found particularly silly or contemptible. And the way all heads instantaneously snapped down when a prayer started was just odd to someone who hasn’t been trained to do those mannerisms.

Not to mention the inside Christian jokes. Apparently Lutherans are very “cerebral”, and this titillated the audience. Anyone care to explain this in-joke to me?

2. FotF seems to think that any sign of interest is equivalent to winning over supporters. They’ll probably love this blog post if they find it. I don’t know if this is wishful thinking or purposeful spin, but it popped up a lot. For example, Daly made a comment how the former President of the National Organization for Women supported FotF’s right to have a pro-life Super Bowl ad. Daly quipped with a grin, “You know something’s going on,” referring to her support. Yeah, an understanding of freedom of speech is going on.

Another example of this is when they mentioned how 27 non-Christian Comcast staff members were helping them film one of their events. The staff mentioned they had never heard religion discussed that way before, and asked for more information. More information does not automatically mean you converted all of those people – but that’s how FotF framed it. I often ask for more information from religious people when I think they’re particularly wacky, not correct.

3. The Christian Veneer. I can’t get over this phenomena. Most of what FotF was saying throughout the night in terms of families and relationships with your spouse was fairly relatable and sane. It was the same sort of advice you’d hear from many secular self-help books like the typical Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus idea (as untrue as that may be).

…But then they had to go and slap Jesus all over it. Is it not enough to just love your spouse, respect their feelings, and compromise a little with them without having a Bible verse telling you to do it? Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and atheists have the same problems and the same solutions. It’s not the Bible that’s giving you the answers – you’re just cherry picking things from the Bible that happen to fit your solution… after you’ve come to it.

4. They didn’t mention gay marriage at all. Hemant and I were both really disappointed. We figured with their fervent anti-gay marriage stance and the recent Prop 8 ruling that they’d be sure to say something. Nada. I guess it just wasn’t the topic of the night. But if anything, I’m now convinced we need more gay marriages because of this event. I mean, the whole thing was about how marital strife comes from men and women inherently communicating differently. If it was a man communicating with a man or a woman communicating with a woman, no problem, right?!

5. All the speakers seemed genuinely nice. This shouldn’t be shocking, but FotF has some platforms that are so nasty that it’s sometimes hard to separate the people from the ideas. I constantly have to remind myself that Christians go out of their way to evangelize and fight for their specific morals because they truly believe in them and care about people. It may be misguided and ultimately harmful, but they’re really doing it with good intentions. I’m sure any of the speakers would be great to chat with over tea… I just don’t want them making any sort of laws. Nor will I stop criticizing their viewpoints just because they’re trying to be nice – it just helps to know where these people are coming from when you do have to debate them.

I’m still no fan of FotF. While they’ve become a bit humanized to me, I still can’t support most of what their organization is doing. Adoption is awesome, but not when you only think heterosexual Christians make good homes. Marriage counseling is great, but not when you assume all other religions are doomed to have failed relationships. Continuing to perpetuate myths about atheists is…well, not so hot. And hell, one of their college programs focuses on teaching students about creationism and intelligent design – it was difficult for this evolutionary biologist to not start facepalming in the middle of the event.

You know, it would be nice if people from FotF would attend some of our godless events. Maybe we could become a bit more humanized, instead of representing depression and debauchery.

…As much as I do like debauchery.

Secular Student Alliance Conference overview

Alright, I guess this conference was a week ago, and I may or may not have been hording a summary post about it for Blogathon, but…hey, can you blame me? 49 posts is a lot!

Anyway, the Secular Student Alliance conference in Columbus, OH was a blast. Well, minus Hemant’s car falling apart. Hemant has already shared some of his thoughts about the conference, but I wanted to chip in my 2 cents as well.

  • The conference started at 10:30am. I cannot stress how brilliant of an idea this was. The vast majority of people at this conference were college students, and we’re not exactly known for being very functional in the morning. Not only that, but it allowed us to socialize at night without dreading the morning. People were actually at the morning sessions. This doesn’t even happen at academic conferences! For example, this allowed us to play poker without the guilt of staying up late. “Aw, I just have a high King.” “…Jen, you have a flush.” “…Yay!” Yes, I’m that annoying person. Yes, we were gambling with Red Hots. Do not rub your eyes after touching Red Hots. Mark learned this the hard way.
  • The talks were all excellent. And I’m not just saying that, really. I’ve been to biology conferences where I microsleep through the whole thing, or want to scream at the horrible PowerPoint presentation. Not at the SSA conference. Even though the vast majority of talks were by students, they were professional, entertaining, and informative. And thankfully the SSA will be putting videos online soon, so I can share some of my favorites with you!
  • The Society of Non-Theists at Purdue won an award for Best Service Project! Hooray! We got a spiffy plaque for our new office space, and a giant check! Wooooo giant checks!
  • Like always, the best part was meeting fellow students in the freethought movement. Hello everyone! I know some of them were kind of shy saying hi to me because of my blog/boobquake, but I’m just as much in awe of some of the stuff they’ve done. I love networking with new people! And of course it was wonderful seeing familiar faces again, some of which I only get to see at this conference. Speaking of familiar faces:
  • Eating dinner with Greta and Hemant at our tongue-in-cheek “VIP Blogger Table” was fun. There’s a certain level of geekery achieved when you sit around talking about blogging for an hour.
  • I think my talk went over really well! At least, people said they liked it afterward and were laughing at the appropriate moments. I can’t understand why they thought some parts were so funny… Don’t worry, you’ll get a video soon enough.

Some suggestions:

  • Unless the field trip is something special like the Creation Museum, just hold it somewhere we can hang out. The zoo was nice, but most of the fun was due to hanging out with people, not because we were actually in a zoo. No need to spend the extra money and extra travel time when all we want to do is sit and chat.
  • Vary up the talk length a bit more. 20 minutes was great, but I’d also like to see some even shorter talks. Maybe throw in a bunch of 10 minute talks where students can talk about specific events that worked well for their group, or a particular learning experience they had.
  • Now that the conference is getting large enough, I’d like to see two separate tracks going at the same time: think “Beginners” and “Advanced” sessions. As someone who ran a club for three years, most of the information on gaining members or advertising was stuff I already knew. But to someone who’s just starting a group or about to be an officer, it’s invaluable. Maybe have some more sessions for the veterans.
  • One more day! I seriously think the conference could easily last all day Sunday. Heck, the students were chanting for it! I didn’t feel at all burnt out by the end.

Oh, and here’s a snapshot of the back of our club t-shirt. Apparently people liked it, since there are 249782 images of my back tagged on Facebook now.If you were there, what did you like or dislike about the conference?

This is post 4 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

TAM8 Part 3 – One last fangirling

The real story from Saturday night was the Skepchick Bordello party. I didn’t really have a costume, so I just wore a low cut shirt to fit in with the Bordello theme. Thankfully a reader stumbled into me and gave me an extra Sheriff pin he had, so I was all set. One of the first people I ran into was Mary Myers, who may be better known to you as “The Trophy Wife.” She was super sweet, totally unlike her husband, who we all know is a huge dick who eats babies in his free time.A fellow party goer asked for my my autograph along with a drawing of a pair of boobs. I obliged. I think this may become my autograph standard, though hopefully a little nicer than after I’ve had three beers.
I also got to meet a bunch of the Skepchicks, including Rebecca, Maria, Carrie, and Amy. Speaking of which, I also bought two new Surlyramics, one for me and one for my mom. Amy, you’ve gotten me addicted!The Skepchicks sure know how to throw a party, because the costume contest concluded in attractive scantily clad young women making out with each other. And the male skeptics rejoiced. Twitter probably crashed at that moment from all the happy tweets.

Me: You missed it.
Hemant: What?
Me: A bunch of hot girls were just making out with each other.
Hemant: Whaaaat?! Noooo!
Ashley: *comes up and pecks me on the lips while his head is turned*
Me: Aaaaand you missed that too.
Hemant: Damnit!!Other perks of the party involved Phil from Skeptic Money doing a cold reading on me. Even though I know he’s not really psychic and I understood his tactics, it was still pretty neat and unsettling. In a couple minutes he was able to get out the name of my ex boyfriend who broke my heart and all sorts of details on him. Very weird. Phil, you should totally make a video about how you do it. But in lighter news, here’s Hemant and Sean Faircloth (executive director of the Secular Coalition for America) playing Rock Band:Eventually Hemant and I headed back because I was starting to freak out about my talk (aka, the beer was losing its effect). We ended up getting some late night breakfast food with some of our new random TAM friends before going to sleep. I got about three hours of sleep before my talk. I think this is still more than most people.

After the Sunday papers I finally got a chance to say hello to James Randi when he wasn’t busy with something. Randi is seriously one of my new favorite people. Not only is he so adorably small that I just want to hug him or smuggle him away in my suitcase, but everything he says is witty, intelligent, and assertive. And did I mention he was adorable? They had to get a milk crate for him to stand on so he could be tall enough for the speakers podium, and he literally went “Weeee!” when stepping up. I want him. Or to at least be like him when I’m 81.
One of my friends bought a deck of Tarot cards for various famous skeptics to sign, and they decided that I was now internet famous enough to make the cut. While shuffling through the deck to find a sex related card appropriate for boobquake, my friend Jamie tried to get my attention.

Jamie: Uh, Jen, I think Simon Singh is waiting to talk to you.
Me: What.
Simon Singh was one of the few famous skeptics left that I was a little too shy to approach, but then he went out of his way to find me to tell me how much he liked boobquake and my use of humor. I seriously can’t express how flattered I am that all these people I look up to want to talk to me. And to think that I’m only 22. Hopefully I have many years of skepticism, TAMs, and humorous activism ahead of me!

That night some of us headed out to the strip just to say we could. It was pretty, but that’s about all I can say since I don’t gamble. We did have a delicious dinner in Caesar’s Palace where Hemant lost his battle against an epic stack of pancakes, and our dinner conversation mostly was about Ron Jeremy and snuff films. We are all kind of weird, if you haven’t figured that out yet.

We returned to the Del Mar lounge and played the lovely drinking game Never Have I Ever for a couple hours. Let’s just say we have enough blackmail on each other that none of us will ever be brave enough to actually use it. Actually I think that’s all I safely can say.

And while I just spent a whole day flailing about all the famous people I met, I just want to say meeting all of my readers was just as cool. Thanks to everyone who said hello, asked for photos, listened to me be awkward, etc. Without all of you I wouldn’t have even been able to go to TAM! It was an amazing networking experience, a ton of fun, and educational. And I’ll be getting to the educational parts in my next posts!

(Thanks to Hemant and Jamie for some of these photos!)

TAM8 Part 2 – More fangirling

I’m not sure what it means that I only vaguely recalled what happened on Friday of the conference. Maybe I was exhausted from the previous day and spending my time listening to talks, or maybe those rooficoladas were really potent. Either way, Friday was sort of a blur.

I spent some of the talks filling in for Hemant whenever he had to step away from liveblogging to go do more important things like interview people or search for caffeine. Let me tell you, it was incredibly tempting to post embarrassing gossip on his twitter feed and blog, both of which were open for my abuse. Thankfully for Hemant, I resisted. Not to mention I learned all the really good gossip long after liveblogging was over, alas.Me plotting Hemant’s blogging demise.

At one point during the conference Eugenie Scott from the National Center for Science Education made a guest appearance! She had just finished hiking in the Grand Canyon and stopped by TAM before her flight. I did a little evolution fangirl flail and ran off to go meet her. I saw her speak at Evolution 2009, but was too shy to say hello at the time. This time I got to say hello, squee about evolution a bit, and squee even more when she said she knew about boobquake and liked it.And after the last talk, I got to meet Brian Keith Dalton, better known as Mr. Deity! I absolutely love Mr. Deity, so that was pretty fun. Also, I think he was one of the handful of people who didn’t know what boobquake was. This was oddly refreshing in a way.
That night some of us had dinner in the Mexican restaurant. I’m convinced their margaritas did not contain any alcohol. Actually, I’m convinced none of the mixed drinks in South Point actually contained any alcohol. I gave up on getting even the slightest buzz and eventually switched to beer for the rest of TAM. If you know how much I dislike beer, you understand how drastic of a step this was.

The Del Mar wasn’t super exciting that night, so Hemant showed me various geeky math stuff, including how to calculate poker probabilities. …I swear that is not a euphemism for something. Anyway, now I know enough about poker to not just randomly bet and hope I end up with something, woo. I actually saw the World Series of Poker on at the restaurant I went to tonight and remembered what he told me, so I guess he’s a good math teacher after all!

Saturday was a bit more exciting since I actually had enough sleep to function. Since I was speaking on Sunday, I was invited to this little speakers reception around dinner time. I was able to speak to Pamela Gay and Debbie Goddard a lot, and Phil asked me to sign something for this special little thing he’s going to do (sorry, you’ll have to wait for him to announce it!). I also saw Richard Saunders of Skeptic Zone again (who was charming), but this time got a photo.I also got a quick photo with Paul Kurtz and James Randi, though I didn’t get to talk to them at all since they were running off to something.

TAM8 Part 1 – Fangirling

The Amaz!ng Meeting was, well, amazing. It can be succinctly summarized as a four day long skeptical orgasm. …And by that I mean an orgasm due to geeking out about skepticism, not that you’re skeptical of your orgasm. Because the latter wouldn’t be that amazing.

Anyway.

There is so much to talk about that I’m going to have to break it down into different topics. And since I’m currently getting tagged in dozens of facebook photos and squeeing over their contents, I figured I’d start with a nice fangirling post. Skeptical celebrities, woo! I’ll blog about the actual talks and other various observations later today.

When I arrived at the conference, I was amazed at how many people I already knew. I guess I never realized how much networking I did while president of the Society of Non-Theists – I could hardly walk through the hallway without seeing a familiar face. But I’m the type of person who’s really shy around strangers – I have a hard time initiating conversation with someone, especially if they’re famous. I pretty much immediately saw James Randi and Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy, but ran away due to fear. While I was running away in fear Richard Dawkins walked right by me. For some reason my reaction was not to flail or faint or pee my pants – instead I blushed like crazy. Yep, geek-crushing on Dawkins.

At the opening reception, I ran into my friend Ashley Paramore (fellow Secular Student Alliance board member and videoblogger healthyaddict), who is about a million times more social than me. Actually, this is probably an understatement. She proceeded to take me around and introduce me to people, and helped me work up the nerve to go take a photo with Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame.I actually had to go back and take a second photo (the one above) because my camera is being held together by duct tape and fell apart before the photo could save. Thankfully Adam was nice enough to do another.

I was standing a couple feet away, just having been introduced to Jamy Ian Swiss by Ashley, when I hear “Jeeeeeeeeeeeen!” and get surprised hugged by Phil Plait!Having someone I was avoiding out of shyness run up and hug me seriously made me feel so much better for the rest of the conference. I cannot stress how freaking nice Phil is. I constantly ran into him throughout the conference, and he always said hi and started chatting with me.

And he wasn’t the only skeptical celebrity to seek me out. Right after I saw Phil I was approached by Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Doubt: A History. I knew boobquake was a media sensation (hopefully I knew that since that’s what my talk was about), but it still never dawned on me that so many people would know me. It was just so strange having people I admire approach me, knowing who I am and wanting to say hello or get a photo. And it was just as bizarrely awesome meeting so many readers and boobquake fans. I had to very quickly get used to the following exchange:

Person: You look really familiar.
Me: Hi, Jen McCreight.
Person: …That name sounds familiar too.
Me: I blog at Blag Hag?
Person: Hmmm…
Me: …Boobquake.
Person: OH YEAH OMG!!!!1!!!one!!

Eventually my friends would just stand by me going “You know she’s the boobquake girl, right?” This was actually somewhat helpful, since I didn’t really want to introduce myself to famous people this way, haha.

After the reception I was hanging out in the hallway with Ashley, slightly zoning out due to sleep deprivation. Hemant was going to be playing in a TAM poker tournament, and I had said I would go watch him for a while. All of a sudden she’s tugging on my arm and running.

Ashley: We need to go now.
Me: What? What happened?
Ashley: Jamy just invited us to dinner with Adam Savage.
Me: What.

Sorry Hemant, you got beaten out by Adam Savage.

Suddenly I’m speedwalking through the casino with Jamy Ian Swiss and Banachek talking about boobquake. The restaurant ended up being full so we decided on liquid fuel instead, and headed upstairs to a somewhat secluded margarita bar. We wait a little bit before Adam Savage and Phil Plait get there, and Adam sits right across from me.

I was peeing down my leg until someone mentioned I was the boobquake girl and I started laughing, and Adam pointed out that I was going to cause a disaster because my boobs bounce every time I laugh. I then proceeded to have a conversation about porn with Adam where we tried to out-weird each other with creepy fetishes. I cannot make something like this up.

Eventually Adam had to go, so got to talk with Phil a lot. I don’t remember if it was this night or another (yes, that’s how much I talked with him), but he asked me if I was still blogging after boobquake. I told him that I try to make at least a post a day, and he was surprised. Apparently he subscribed to my blog’s feed but it never worked. The fact that Phil Plait has been attempting to read my blog since April and failing because of a technical problem is seriously not acceptable. Damn you, Google Reader. I sent him a link to the correct feed, so hopefully that helps.

The little private party started to die, so I went back down to join Skeptics in the Pub at the Silverado Lounge. My friends kind of hated me that I had snuck off with drinks with Adam without telling them (sorry, I was sworn to secrecy!).

Me: I think the only person left that I really want to get a photo with is Richard Dawkins.
Julie: Well, he’s right behind you.
Me: What.
Richard Dawkins was about two feet behind me having a beer and I didn’t even notice. I went up and asked for a photo (the one from this post) and he politely agreed. Before he could escape I mentioned that we were going to be published together, and he suddenly became a lot more interested and friendly. I explained how the publishers for the Atheist’s Guide to Christmas were creating a US edition and wanted to add some American authors (which he didn’t know about), and that I was one of them. He asked what my piece was about, and I explained how it was a satire about atheist Christmas toys based on my Atheist Barbie drawing.

He asked a little more about me, so the talk turned to how I’d be starting my PhD and that I study genetics and evolution. I got to geek out about my undergraduate research for a bit since he was actually interested. Ashley then mentioned that I was also the creator of boobquake, and he remarked how he thought it was a wonderful idea, except that he didn’t like the word “boob.” Remember when I was wondering if a commenter on the boobquake post really was Richard Dawkins or not? Yep, it was him. Richard Dawkins has commented on my blog. Gah. I gave him a card to my blog and he happily accepted it, and we got one more photo.

I still can’t believe that I got to speak to Richard Dawkins for that long, and that he seemed so genuinely interested. I’m still on a fangirl high because of it. Oh, and since the guy with my camera screwed up at first, I now have a silly photo of all of our crotches:
I also met Michael Shermer and Brian Dunning right after that, but didn’t get a chance to snap any photos. Then I went to go retrieve Hemant as he lost at poker (though he made it really far!) and convince him to go to Skeptics in the Tub. He complained about how much he hated water despite the fact that he went and put on swim trunks and sat in the hot tub for a couple hours. Yeah, he really hates water. I also prodded Phil into coming. So yeah, I was hanging out in a hot tub with Hemant and Phil. Again, can’t make this stuff up.

Can you spot your hottubbing bloggers?

Eventually I went and crashed. All of this happened on just Thursday night. Fangirling about the rest of the conference will be up soon.

TAM8 is almost here!

In less than 24 hours I’ll be sitting in Las Vegas with a hoard of skeptics and heathens! Needless to say, I’m super excited for TAM8. I haven’t been sleeping well the last two nights because I keep thinking of all the awesome things that are about to go down.

Some things I’m specifically looking forward to:

  • Richard Dawkiiiiinnnns! Sorry, but as an atheist and an evolutionary biologist, I totally fangirl over Dawkins. If I get a photo with him I’ll be so happy.
  • But in general, meeting people! Especially my readers and all the random celebrities that’ll be there. Right now I’m giddy, but I’m sure once I’m there and Adam Savage is standing 10 feet from me I’ll be peeing my pants. Oh, and a friend has requested that I grope at least one celebrity. I think the likelihood of this actually happening is contingent upon how many drinks I have during the socials. And that is contingent upon how many drinks people buy me, since I am still a cheap college student, haha.
  • The workshops on Feminism and Sex. Of course I had to sign up for those!
  • The Skepchick Bordello party. Though I pretty much don’t have a costume. Sorry, being from Indiana does not automatically mean I can easily dress up like a cowgirl.
  • Rooming with Hemant and Jamie. It’s like a big godless slumber party! Just imagine, we can paint each others’ nails and play Never Have I Ever all night. Except I hate nail polish and I always lose at that game since I can never think of something I haven’t done.

But don’t worry, I’m not just going to abandon you guys. Again, I have some posts set up for the days I’ll be gone. Don’t expect any posts from TAM while I’m there, though. Wifi in the conference room is $25 an hour, and $12 a night for our hotel room, soooo…uh, yeah, no internet for me (I don’t have an iPhone either). But I will be tweeting like crazy, so keep checking my twitter page.

And for those of you who are also going…say hello! I’ll admit I get a little social anxiety when I’m in big crowds, and I’m more comfortable with people approaching me than me approaching people. So if you don’t say hi, I’m probably going to go lurk in a corner and stare at various celebrities in total fear. Except for if I’ve had a couple of drinks in me – so expect my anxiety to be obliterated at all the social functions.

Oh, yeah, and I’m speaking on Sunday. Bright and early at 8:45am on Skepticism, Humor, and Going Viral: What We Can Learn from Boobquake. Considering the Skepchick Bordello party is the night before and rides back don’t start until 1am…yeah, I’m doomed. If anyone comes despite their horrible hangover and sleep deprivation, I’ll greatly appreciate it!

Now, I still have to go pack up my entire apartment since I’m moving back to my parents’ house the day after I get back…and my lab is having a going away dinner for me tonight. Busy busy!