If you should ever find yourself in my neighborhood, and were to walk up to my door, I have to warn you: the welcome mat is splattered with blood stains. I didn’t do it! No Jehovah’s Witnesses are missing from the region! (They never come to my door anymore, anyway.)

We got an unpleasant surprise this morning in that the nest of baby bunnies outside our door was raided, probably by one of the local cats, and the whole family was butchered and laid out on our doorstep. And these bunnies were at that cute stage with fur and big eyes…or at least, they would have been cute if they’d all had heads and their viscera wasn’t splayed out everywhere and they weren’t lying cold and limp in a pool of blood.

I do have to wonder why, though, whenever there’s a scattering of corpses around the house, my family looks to me and expects me to do the clean up.

I just got a copy of the promotional flyer for my Seattle visit, so here it is.

PZ Myers: On Science, Blogs, and Intelligent Debates

Paul “PZ” Myers is persona non grata at the Discovery Institute. He was recently booted out of a screening of the film “Expelled”–an irony certainly not lost on him. And now the evolutionary biologist and rabble-rouser blogger is coming to Seattle for one night only. He’ll be talking about the evolution of creationism and other oxymoronic topics with the same zeal and wit that have made him one of the fittest survivors on the science blog circuit.

Join the Northwest Science Writers Association and the Forum on Science Ethics and Policy for a conversation with PZ Myers. He’ll answer your questions and take us inside his popular blog, Pharyngula. He’s been called a “godless liberal” and his blog posts have been described as “random biological ejaculations.” And that’s just what he says. Others have attacked him for his stout devotion to evolution and probably for being funnier than those he offends.

NSWA and FoSEP present…
PZ Myers: On Science, Blogs, and Intelligent Debates
Pacific Science Center, Laser Dome
Monday, June 2, 2008
7 – 9 p.m.
FREE to the public

Tell your friends. Bring your questions.

Whoa. There’s an expectation that I’ll be funny? Uh-oh. The pressure is on.

At least those expectations are offset by the fact that I’m going to be speaking in a laser dome, which is very cool. I hope I have full access to all of the controls; hecklers beware, you could be reduced to a small heap of smoking ash.

I was interviewed for mindcore — I seem to recall that I might have said some harsh things about Francis Collins in this one, but the are all kind of blurring together in my mind now.

I’ve had about enough. The last of my kids is doing these obnoxious things like graduating from high school, and now, attending the final prom.

They have to stop trying to make me feel old.

My last class for this semester was today. I’m done with the teaching part, now all that’s left is the dry, husky, tedious, boring administrative part: final exams and grading and the passing of final judgment on the efforts of my students. I get to become a mindless bureaucratic drone unenlivened by creative thought for a little while.

Anticipate continued incoherence, with light and scattered posting for a while. But there is hope, and none too soon.

I’ve been profiled in MinnPost — and it’s mostly boring stuff I already knew, but the reporter apparently called around the Morris community, too, which is how I learned this:

Myers acknowledged that he is something of a curiosity in a Minnesota community of church-goers, many of them deeply committed social and political conservatives.

Still, Myers has created no big buzz in town, said the Rev. Tom Fangmeier, an Assemblies of God pastor who chairs the Stevens County Ministerial Board. One Lutheran pastor complained to the board about Myers, Fangmeier said, but “I haven’t heard about him in the cafes or anywhere else around town.”

How … strange. I wonder what exactly they would expect to hear about me? I’m sitting in the Common Cup cafe right now, and I don’t think I could generate much of a buzz. “Oh. He’s sitting. He has a nice laptop. He doesn’t slurp his coffee.”

It’s very amusing that I’ve been reported to the Stevens County Ministerial Board. Perhaps I will be defrocked.

Tonight, in about an hour, I’m going to be on Second Life in a talk show called Virtually Speaking. You can show up there in your avatar, or if you aren’t quite that nerdy, you can just listen in on the audio simulcast.

Strangely, I just realized that I have absolutely no idea what the topic of the interview will be. I guess you can just surprise me with questions!

I’m home. It’s been a very long day with horrible flight delays, and I’m grouchy. I must frog blast the vent core.

I was stuck on an airplane for far too many hours, and I wanted to get some work done — on my laptop. Have you noticed how tightly packed the seats are in coach? It was tight, but I could at least get started on some work, when the guy in front of me decided to recline his seat back and sleep. Suddenly there was a head rest aimed at my throat and the back of the guy’s head in my nose. I could smell his shampoo! (I think it was scented with sweat vinaigrette, with extra animal fats added for body). I tried to work some more, but the only way to do it was to partially open my laptop, rest the hinges on my thighs, and reach into the gap to type; it was like squatting by the tank at Seaworld, trying to do dentistry on a dolphin while squinting at the phosphorescent herring stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Airlines, please. If you’re going to squeeze the seats together that closely, could you please lock them all in one position? It just doesn’t work otherwise. And how about screening passengers for basic hygiene? By the end of the trip I was beginning to think that it would be a mercy if the hairball in front of me detonated.

OK, I feel a little better now.