I’m an exceptionally sound sleeper. I’ve been known to snooze through fire alarms.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m an exceptionally sound sleeper. I’ve been known to snooze through fire alarms.
I’m heading in to Minneapolis for my morning at Camp Quest tomorrow—comments awaiting authorization may be held up for a while, so don’t panic.
I may just pop in to the Minneapolis Drinking Liberally event tonight—we’ll find out who actually reads the blog by who is surprised. There’s also a Morris Drinking Liberally tonight that I’ll have to miss, unfortunately.
…because Pam Spaulding at Pandagon had a kind word to say about James Lileks. Not his Bleat or Screed blog, fortunately, or for his regular column in the Strib which I find tediously twee, but for his masterful book, Interior Desecrations. You have to have lived through the 1970s to be able to understand how tacky things got for a while there—someday I’m going to have to dig up that old photo of myself in a polyester paisley print shirt and bell bottoms just to put the younger generation of readers here into shock.
While I’m in a “what were they thinking?” mood, I’ll mention one shock we had in this otherwise nice 1950s era house we own. The upstairs is carpeted bright red…no, scarlet, a flaming crimson color, which was discombobulating enough. In addition, though, one of the upstairs bedrooms was wallpapered in bright ♣ green shamrocks ♣ .
It was one of the selling points, actually. I figured if we ever had trouble making the mortgage payments, I already had the decor to open a bordello for leprechauns.
Honestly, I don’t feel a day over 12. I remember leaning on an old fence near the rhubarb on a fine fall day in 1969, looking out over the mucky little stream that ran near our house and listening to the frogs creak, and thinking that this was a very fine life I’ve got, and I think I’ll hang on to it for as long as I could, and maybe in a little bit I’ll get on my bike and pedal into town to see if there any new model airplanes at the five and dime, and browse the comic book rack at Stewart’s Drug, and then maybe say hello to Grandma and fuel up on cookies and kool-aid. That was me then, and this is me now, and there’s a conscious sense of continuity between us—and while Grandma is long gone and I haven’t been drawn to model airplanes or comic books in a good long time, they’re still all there in my mind’s eye. I can still hear the hum of the fan at the drug store and smell that plasticky reek of toluene and feel the nubbly cushions on my grandparents’ sofa. I still remember that old bike of mine, an ancient single-speed racing bike that made my thighs strain and ache every time I started out, but then felt so good once I got up to speed that I never wanted to stop…in part because then I’d have to lean hard on those pedals to get it moving again.
The Strib has an article on Camp Quest of Minnesota, the secular summer camp that is starting up this week. It’s a fairly good story, although it’s unfortunate to see it overwhelmed by the gigantic rah-rah story on crazy Pentacostalism spread over the next two pages of the paper, by the same reporter.
By the way, I’ll be volunteering at Camp Quest on Friday, to show the kids how to deal with creationists.
I occasionally put up some of the wackier/more obnoxious e-mail I get from creationists and other deluded True Believers, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression—I also get lots of friendly and supportive email. I just don’t think any of it is quite as entertaining as the crazy stuff. Anyway, for balance, and because he was nice enough to give permission to post it, here’s a message from the sane side.
I’m going to be giving a talk tomorrow and Tuesday in St Paul and Minneapolis—if you’re free at the noon hour, stop on by! The title of the talk is “Science and Secularism in a Demon-Haunted World,” and it’s sponsored by the Atheists for Human Rights.
On Monday at noon I’ll be at the St Paul Landmark Center, 75 West Fifth Street, in the Ramsey County Room.
On Tuesday at noon I’ll be in the Minneapolis Downtown Public Library, in the Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi Room.
If you aren’t in the Twin Cities area, be patient…I just agreed to do an interview with the Infidel Guy sometime in August, so you might be able to hear me over your computer then.
I just finished a brief interview with Tom Crann of Minnesota Public Radio’s All Things Considered show, so if you hear me calling the creationists idiots while you’re driving home sometime in the next few days, don’t be too shocked. (Sorry, I didn’t ask exactly when it will be aired.)
Here’s a link to the radio program.
Syd Barrett is dead.
Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro’
you have no word
trip, trip to a dream dragon
hide your wings in a ghost tower
sails cackling at every plate we break
cracked by scattered needles
the little minute gong
coughs and clears his throat
madam you see before you stand
hey ho, never be still
the old original favorite grand
grasshoppers green Herbarian band
and the tune they play is “In Us Confide”
so trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro’
you have no word
Please leave us here
close our eyes to the octopus ride!
Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood
isn’t it bad so quiet there, in the wood
meant even less to me than I thought
with a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
clover honey pots and mystic shining feed…
well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border
hey ho, huff the Talbot
“Cheat” he cried shouting kangaroo
it’s true in their tree they cried
Please leave us here
close our eyes to the octopus ride!
The madcap laughed at the man on the border
hey ho, huff the Talbot
the winds they blew and the leaves did wag
they’ll never put me in their bag
the seas will reach and always seep
so high you go, so low you creep
the wind it blows in tropical heat
the drones they throng on mossy seats
the squeaking door will always squeak
two up, two down we’ll never meet
so merrily trip forgo my side
Please leave us here
close our eyes to the octopus ride!
He was…unique.
Because all the cool kids are doing it, I plugged my face into this Face Recognition software.
I am not happy.
