I've reached an odd level of fame

Keep in mind this all took place with us screaming and not being able to hear because of loud dance music.

Me: *dancing somewhat drunkenly on the dance floor with a sea of people*
Gal I don’t know: Hey! Uh, I have a random question, sorry.
Me: Uh, what?
Gal: Do you know Josh [last name]?
Me: Yeah, he’s like one of my best friends
Gal: Oh my god, I think I read your blog!
Me: …Blag Hag?
Gal: YEAH! That’s so weird! I totally wanted to join your club too
Me: *attempts to explain the next date and website while mildly inebriated, probably failed*

…It’s one thing for people to recognize me at the Secular Student Alliance conference, but at a dance club/bar? I…am sort of in awe.

It was also around this point that a swarm of cute guys appeared on the dance floor and were actually dancing with me. Then I recognized a couple of them and realized they were all coming from the Queer Student Union’s callout. I shake my fist at you, cute gay guys getting my hopes up!

I’ve reached an odd level of fame

Keep in mind this all took place with us screaming and not being able to hear because of loud dance music.

Me: *dancing somewhat drunkenly on the dance floor with a sea of people*
Gal I don’t know: Hey! Uh, I have a random question, sorry.
Me: Uh, what?
Gal: Do you know Josh [last name]?
Me: Yeah, he’s like one of my best friends
Gal: Oh my god, I think I read your blog!
Me: …Blag Hag?
Gal: YEAH! That’s so weird! I totally wanted to join your club too
Me: *attempts to explain the next date and website while mildly inebriated, probably failed*

…It’s one thing for people to recognize me at the Secular Student Alliance conference, but at a dance club/bar? I…am sort of in awe.

It was also around this point that a swarm of cute guys appeared on the dance floor and were actually dancing with me. Then I recognized a couple of them and realized they were all coming from the Queer Student Union’s callout. I shake my fist at you, cute gay guys getting my hopes up!

Photo Scavenger Hunt Results

So a month ago I mentioned that our club would be having a freethinking photo scavenger hunt, where they had to take photos of various atheism and science themed things. I finally have most of the photos from people (still missing some good ones, but I give up) so I’m going to post some of my favorites. Feel free to do this event at with your group too!

1. …your team spelling out a word related to science or atheism. (Bonus point for each stranger you get to help you)
Lipid! Randomly ran into an old high school friend who helped us.
2. …physics in action.
3. …someone NOT in your group playing chess, go, sudoku, or other strategy/puzzle game
4. …a teapot.
5. …a scientific statue.6. …the oldest scientific apparatus you can find.
7. …a man with a Darwin-like beard.
8. …an atheist stereotype. (The best was one of my secretary with a stuffed Devil on each shoulder, but no one sent me that one! Boo hiss!)
9. …the oldest copy of “The Origin of Species” you can find. (Bonus: Team w/ oldest).

10. …the silliest version of the Bible that you can find.

11. …evolution.
A classic.

12. …natural selection.
Josh is about to be removed from the gene pool.
13. …a scarlet A.
14. …a mutation.15. …someone in a lab coat.

16. …as many places of worship as possible in the background (Bonus point for each extra building).Mine had a Christian, Jewish, and Mormon place, but I think we counted six churches in this one.
17. …someone NOT in your group who was reading an atheist/science book
18. …your group smiling with a theist wearing some sort of religious clothing (Bonus: Awesomeness of outfit. For example, cross necklace = +0, Pope = +infinity).

19. …an endorsement of a religion in a public place where such an endorsement shouldn’t be or just seems silly.
Ah, the Indiana “In God We Trust” license plate. No brainer there.

This is the artwork you see when you walk into Lilly, the biology building (where I basically live nowadays). Yes, those are the hands of God creating all life on earth. In the biology building. All of the biology professors hate it, and it’s been vandalized and removed multiple times since its been put up.
20. …a dinosaur.
21. …a mythical creature.
22. …the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Om nom nom rabbit stew

In case that last post got you down, go take a peek at Hemant’s post for an embarrassing (and delicious) baby photo of me. I actually asked my mom to go find a baby photo of me dressed as food. She was a tad bit confused.

I swear I was probably only 2 years old in that photo – I was a ginormous child. To put that in perspective, I was 5’9″ at age 10 (have only grown an inch since) and in my kindergarten class photo I was taller than the teacher. She was pretty short, but…yeah.

So, bunny outfit redux this Halloween? =P

Creation Museum Part 7

Next was the Ark room. To be completely honest, I don’t have a ton to say about it. The story of Noah’s Ark was probably the first Biblical story I learned, so the ludicrous things presenting here weren’t so shocking since I had heard them all already. I mean, we all know due to size and construction method the Ark would have sank in a couple of days, if it made it that long at all. Part of the room was made to look like part of the Ark, and guys were sitting around talking about how crazy Noah is in super stereotypical Jewish accents:I also have to point out that this is where I found the single black mannequin in the entire museum, and he’s ostracized and drinking out of a flask:
An astute museum goer pointed out that some of the mannequins seemed to be borrowed from a Discount Fake Celebrity store. For example, here we have Kiera Knightley weaving away:With her friend Angelina Jolie:I also found this sign particularly funny, and tweeted it with the comment of “That’s what she said”:To which Hemant (who was apparently further back in the museum) replied “No, that’s what she said” with this photo.

Hemant wins.

And in case you didn’t notice, by this part of the museum I was going a little insane.

The next room was full of disturbing miniatures of what happened when the flood began. There were a bunch of tiny humans trying to make animal sacrifices, or running in fear, or clinging to rocks, or being swept away by waves. Like I said, very family friendly. There was a funny one where they explained that Noah’s family fed themselves by growing a small garden deep within the boat. In the dark. Again with the photosynthesis fail – I’m pretty sure they didn’t have heat lamps back then and that a couple of candles aren’t going to be enough. Oh, and let’s not forget the diorama of dinosaurs getting on the Ark too:This room also had what I think (may have missed others) was the only interactive exhibit in the museum. It was just some computer screens with a simple jigsaw puzzle you could put together, and a couple of real life puzzles. That’s it. This is one part where you can tell this really is more of a theme park than a museum (well, other than all the mind numbingly stupid inaccuracies and lies, of course). You’re not supposed to interact or ask questions, you’re supposed to just accept what you’re being told. God did it, the end. Yet another reason to be terrified that small children are learning this – not only are their minds being filled with rot, but they’re not encouraged to question anything at all.

And since we haven’t had anything extraordinarily stupid yet, here you go:
Yes, you read that right. They believe that the earth had a different set of continents before the flood, that the flood was so disruptive that everything moved around and that Pangaea formed under water, and by the time the flood ended Pangaea had already broken up and formed our modern continents.

…

WHAT?!?! Why do they even bother saying this?! They outright deny so many other facts, why even bother claiming that Pangaea existed at all? How is the theory of plate tectonics (which they bastardized by saying the flood moved everything) necessary to somewhat include, but we can just say evolution never happened at all?!?! This is where all of my coherent mental thoughts were replaced by repeated screaming. I was just trying to keep it mental and not actually start yelling at the exhibits.

Then I saw signs talking about evolution, and I knew it was about to get much, much worse.

(Thanks to Vanessa and Josh for extra photos)

Part1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Creation Museum Part 6

Now that Adam and Eve ate the fruit, the world’s about to go to crap. We rounded the corner and found this pleasant scene:A very kids-friendly museum! Of course, it’s alright to scare little kids if it teaches them to follow the Bible – think hell houses. This was also in a dark scary room, but the flash from my camera kind of ruins that feeling. Anyway, this is supposed to illustrate their shame of being naked, and how they need to make animal sacrifices to God to make him happy.Please join me in facepalming: “But because humans are not related to animals.” So, let’s get cracking on the human sacrifices then with that logic! And as a side note, does God love nudists because they have no shame? …Moving on.
We meet Adam and Eve again, but now things are different. They have their sons, Caine and Abel, they have to produce their own food, Adam has put on a few pounds (sin = beer belly?), and Eve is barefoot and pregnant like she belongs (somehow I missed a photo of that, oh well). This seems tame enough, but things start getting really crazy here with a new theme: Before Adam’s Sin, and After (you really should click for a larger image and read these things, they’re terrible).
Plants aren’t alive? The hell? I guess we need to kick Botany out of Biology! What do those silly scientists know about what’s alive, anyway? I guess animals not dying for the short period of time they were in the Garden of Eden isn’t too preposterous. Well, immortality is silly, but it’s not like the entire ecosystem would be out of whack or overpopulated because of a lack of deaths. But this is the sign that killed me:
Wut.

…

They’re saying a T-Rex was a vegetarian until sin. I don’t think I need to explain why this makes no fucking sense. Why the hell did some dinosaurs have big freaking pointy teeth? So they could munch up lettuce better? I don’t think so. Either God did a shitty job at designing creatures and arbitrarily gave some useless teeth, or he already knew the fall was going to happen so he had some animals ready to fill the carnivore niche. In which case, did Adam and Eve really have free will if God already knew what was going to happen because it was part of his plan? Did God really just want an excuse to make bacon? EDIT: Apparently I missed a vital part of the exhibit: Velociraptors prior to the fall had MOLARS that through “natural selection” (not evolution, since that doesn’t exist) turned into canine teeth. What the HELL. NO.
Om nom nom. Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder.

Of course, I’m probably thinking about this too much. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation to all this. Oh…maybe that the Creation Museum is full of shit and denying everything science or even common sense has ever told us! That’s right, I forgot.
Yeah, I’m not even going to touch this one. It’s just here to show you how outstandingly stupid this room was.

Of course, once you think it can never get worse, it does. I stood in front of this sign for a good long time, probably with a look of confusion and rage on my face (click for larger):
God logic for why Biblical incest is okay but modern incest isn’t hurts my brain:
1. “All humans are related. So whenever someone gets married, they marry their relative.” You know, this is true with evolution too! But I think all reasonable people can see a difference between marrying your sister or cousin and marrying someone thousands of years removed from you.
2. Abraham was a cool guy and married his half sister, so that makes it okay! Well okay for then, then God changed his mind and now you can’t marry close relatives. So, are they actually saying that some of God’s laws were applicable for ancient times but not for modern times? I guess there’s hope for gay and women’s rights! Right?
3. We have inbreeding depression today because Adam’s sin caused mutations. Ugh, I hate when they bring in genetics to explain their crazy ideas.
4. Adam was genetically perfect, so inbreeding back then didn’t matter because there we less mutations. Man, at the mutation rate necessary to go from “genetically perfect” (whatever that means) to our current level of diversity in just 6,000 years, I’m surprised we don’t all have superpowers or extra limbs sprouting out of our foreheads.
5. Irrelevant comment about sex outside of marriage.
6. Lie about marriage being defined by God. You have no right to criticize the Bible if you don’t believe it. Wait…what? Well isn’t that convenient. Only the people who don’t have anything to criticize are the ones that can criticize it!

…

We all felt like soon we’d have no brain cells left, so we moved on.

The next room has a absolutely terrifying animatronic Methuselah. He was creepier then the little girl we first met, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when his eyes moved and looked right at me. I didn’t take a photo because I was afraid my camera would disintegrate from the pure evil emanating from this thing. They had a sign next to Methuselah with all the ages of various famous people from the Bible, and I think they were trying to show that people lived shorter and shorter lives since sin was introduced. I’m not quite sure how sin “builds up” over generations (I think they meant mutations), but I’m not sure about most of the stuff in this museum.

(Thanks to Vanessa and Josh for extra photos)

Part1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Creation Museum Part 1

I’m finally home from this crazy, awesome, non-stop weekend. People have been asking me how the Creation Museum was, and I always have to pause before I answer. There is just so much to say about it that I don’t know where to begin. In order to make sure I don’t forget anything, I think I’m just going to retell my trip in chronological order. This is going to take multiple posts, so stay tuned throughout the day!

Mark, Josh, and I left around 6 am Friday morning. The drive from West Lafayette, IN to the Creation Museum in Kentucky was supposedly a little under 3 hours, and we didn’t want to be late. I was driving (won a lovely travel grant from the Secular Student Alliance, thank you!) and functioning on about 3 hours of sleep due to over excitement the night before, but I was so pumped that morning that it didn’t really matter. Only about 45 minutes into our drive we saw an anti-evolution billboard which seemed very appropriate for the day. Really not surprising though – if you’ve ever driven through Indiana, you know religious billboards are a common sight.

I thought Kentucky was much prettier than Indiana. It’s always a relief to see rolling hills and something other than corn and soybean fields. When we were about 15 minutes from the Creation Museum, an eerie fog rolled in:Me: This is really creeping me out. It’s like we’re going to Jurassic Park.
Josh: Through the mist of time, back to the beginning… six thousand years ago…

In a movie like fashion, the mist cleared once we arrived at the museum gates. When we parked there was already a small gaggle of heathens hanging out in the parking lot, even though we were an hour early. There was something very strange and satisfying about knowing those people you’ve never met are your allies. I mean, it wasn’t hard to figure out who was in the group, since everyone was wearing science or atheism shirts. Four of my other Purdue friends who were driving in a different car arrived right after us (even though they left 20 min before…whoops, guess I was being a speed demon). Eventually the group was getting a little too big, and since I didn’t want anyone to get run over by a car, I sort of ushered the group towards the front of the museum. I think it’s instinct for me to go into my Leader role when dealing with a bunch of atheists, haha. A security guard checked out bags, which was really just a quick glance and not invasive at all. Everyone was very polite and cooperative. This is also where we met our first dinosaur:The Creation Museum was nice enough to set up a little tent for our group so we could check in in an organized fashion. I was near the front of the line since we got there early, and it was very fun to watch the group grow.Almost immediately after I signed in, PZ walked right by me. Apparently I visibly freaked out in a fangirlish way, because my friends started laughing at me. I didn’t want to bother him since he just got there (and I was still too shy), so we went to get into the museum. The first thing you can do when you enter is get your photo taken in front of a green screen to make it seem like a giant T-Rex is about to eat you. The Purdue group – 8 students and a mom – thought why the hell not, and took one. The photo was hilarious, but then we found out it was 15 dollars to get a copy. Screw that. I had already spent 10 bucks to get in, an I wasn’t giving them a penny more.

Immediately after that I spotted the infamous Pastor Tom walking around the entrance. Not wanting any kerfuffles, our group quickly moved towards the exhibit. The first thing you’re greeted with is an impressive mastodon:
It’s description, however, was less impressive. I made a mistake of not taking a photo of the sign so I don’t know the exact number, but they hilariously think that the last ice age occurred within the last two or three thousand years. We already had major human civilizations around at that time, many of those who had written records. I don’t think we’ve discovered any Egyptian hieroglyphics about extreme temperature changes. They’d probably claim that just because we can’t find them doesn’t mean they don’t exist (sound familiar?). But really, it’s pointless to harp on this one fact, since the whole museum is filled with ridiculous dating. As PZ already pointed out, it’s hilarious that they take the time to say dinosaurs were alive and well in 2348 BC. I wonder what would be harder for multiple human civilizations to fail to record: giant lizard creatures roaming the earth, or drastic temperature changes and cold? Hmmm…

Part1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Creation Museum Hilarity

I’m all checked in to the dorms at OSU for the Secular Student Alliance conference, so time for a quick blog post before the conference starts! I’ll talk about serious stuff later when I have more time. Here are just some fun things.

Here’s a glimpse of the line of heathens waiting to get into the Creation Museum. This is before everyone got there, these are just the early people:
This is one of the first things you see when you enter the museum: a little girl with a dinosaur. I swear this girl fell right smack dab in the middle of the uncanny valley. She freaked the hell out of me when she would look straight at you.Josh and I enjoyed this exhibit sign:ZOMG DINOSAURS!No, not for people who believe this insane stuff:Look! Atheist Evangelist! How appropriate:A glimmer of hope in the museum:And just to rub it in:I like how much more excited I look than PZ, hahaha.

Fast forward to OSU:

After we had checked into our rooms, we noticed Wife Swap was playing on TV. Ironically, an atheist swapped with a super religious family (not the famous one with the crazy “God’s Warrior”, a new one). Then PZ walks in to check in, and after he’s done he came to see what we were watching. There’s something oddly cool about me, Mark, and Josh sitting and laughing at a horrifying and ironic episode of Wife Swap with PZ. Oh, and even better – PZ’s room is directly across the hall from me. Seriously.

And this was just the cherry on top:

Bus full of cheerleaders suddenly appears out of no where
Me: Hey Mark, proof there is a God!
Mark: …Wait, no, they’re jailbait!
Me: Never mind, proof there is no God.

More fun stuff later. Have to find food now!

Ok, Blag Hag Swag open for realz!

So after seventy billion people told me how much CafePress sucks, I decided to switch my store to Zazzle. And boy, is it a ton a better. More customizable, better quality printing, more profit for me, and most importantly, free. Ahem, so here is the real Blag Hag Swag!

And to celebrate the non-crappy store, here’s a present for you:
Yep, page 4 of the comic is now available on shirts, mugs, and potentially other crap if you ask me nicely. It’s also available on black (looks pretty classy) and with or without the words “I survived the Creation Museum 8/7/09.” I may be jumping the gun a bit, because who knows, maybe we won’t survive. I guess this is my way of hoping we do.

The one down side to Zazzle? No printing on panties! Come on, what are they thinking? I may keep CafePress around just for that option…

PS: Blog readers who leave inspiring t-shirt designs in the comments have a high likelihood of them being drawn. Especially before school starts.

I think this is pretty much the best thing someone has ever called me

Occasionally I like to wander around the internet, checking out blogs that have linked to my posts. Well, one of those was The Good Kentuckian, which I’m 99.99% sure is supposed to be a Stephen Colbert-like satire (though one can never be to sure when it comes to Poes). My blog is listed under what is quite possibly the best group name ever: FeminiNazi Nation of Christ-Haters.

Yessss. I’ve made the big time! The only thing that could make that better is if the blog was sincerely conservative. But you never know with the internet. I’ve definitely heard real conservatives say stupider things than what they have in their posts.

PZ and Hemant are also listed, but I think my group name is still the best. Pharyngula made “America-Hating Blogs to Watch Closely” and Friendly Atheist unfortunately got “Atheists & Homosexuals – Evil Intertubes Run By Demons.” Sorry Hemant, I guess you’re giving these guys the wrong signals!

And while we’re on the topic of blogging accomplishments, apparently my blog is blocked at someone’s work for “objectional content.” I’m not sure if it’s the atheism, occasional swearing, or random discussions about sex, but I think this is hilariously awesome. Well, not awesome for the people trying to read my blog at work – sorry guys – but I’ll consider it an honor!