I’m torn

On one hand, I can totally get behind the message of this public announcement:

“Seattle Public Schools has been receiving numerous questions regarding the District’s policy on the celebration of religious holidays. We have a ‘Religion and Religious Accommodation’ policy, approved by the School Board in 1983, stating that ‘no religious belief or non-belief should be promoted by the School District or its employees, and none should be disparaged.'”

On the other hand, the thing they’re objecting to?

A local high school sophomore, Jessica, on a community service project was volunteering for a third-grade class at Seattle Public Schools. “At the end of the week I had an idea to fill little plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans and other candy, but I was kind of unsure how the teacher would feel about that,” said Jessica, reports MyNorthwest. “She said that I could do it as long as I called this treat ‘spring spheres.’ I couldn’t call them Easter eggs.”

…Alright, I know I’m a rabid militant extremist angry atheist and all, but even this seems a bit a silly to me.

For one, they’re certainly not spheres – and we wonder why math scores are so low.

But are Easter eggs even religious anymore? When I was a kid, I never really thought about spiritual dogma as I was checking under the couch – I just wanted some chocolate. Or maybe a dollar bill if I was really lucky. I think I may lump this in with singing about Santa Claus – something that maybe used to vaguely link to religion, but now is thrown around for entertainment purposes and happens to retain a historical name.

I do find it amusing that Christians are the ones flipping out about this. Pfftttt, like Easter eggs have anything to do with Christianity. Where are the angry emails from pagans?

EDIT: Apparently the Seattle Public Schools haven’t been able to verify this story yet, and the radio show where it was first presented is a conservative pundit. Who smells a manufactured controversy so people can make a stink about those evil atheists taking god out of our schools? (Thanks, Liz)

Godless Seattlites – want to learn more about Christian apologetics?

Bob Seidensticker will be speaking at the Seattle Atheists meeting tomorrow about common Christian apologetics. He’ll be examining common arguments so we can learn their strengths and weaknesses, and be better prepared to respond in the future. It starts at 1pm and is at 2100 24th Ave. S. in Seattle, WA.

I’ve met Bob a couple times now, and he’s wonderfully eloquent – I highly recommend his talk to anyone who has the time to go. I’ll be there for sure!

How do I hate thee, apartment? Let me count the ways

I live in a basement apartment. My landlord and his wife live upstairs in the main part of the house. I do like some things about it. It’s a great layout, more than enough space for me, and in a great location. But I’m starting to hate it so much that it’s driving me mad, and I need to rant.

  • Infested with spiders. Including fucking hobo spiders (Google it, if you’re brave – I’m not finding a link). I’m an arachnophobe. This is not good.
  • My landlord pops in constantly, and will even unlock my door and come in. I know this because he’s come by when I’m in the bathroom or getting out of the shower and not able to answer the door, and suddenly he’s coming in my apartment. What the fuck. I basically haven’t been able to watch porn since I moved here because I don’t want my landlord randomly popping in. Do you know how serious this is? I can’t watch porn!
  • Something was fucked up with our water, and he said he’d warn me when the repair people were coming later in the week. Instead he starts banging on my door at 7am to shut off my water. Guess who didn’t get to shower before work?
  • He and his wife apparently leave for California for 3 months out of the year, and they didn’t warn me at all. What do I do if something breaks?
  • I can’t reset my internet when it’s down (which is frequently, fuck you, Comcast) because the router is upstairs in his house.
  • And on that note, I have no control over the heat. I’ve been freezing my ass off all winter, even with a space heater. And when I told him that, he laughed and commented on how is female tennents are always cold.
  • I discovered I have a “No Parties” clause in my lease (my fault – didn’t notice it until I had already driven 2,000 miles to Seattle and was committed to the place). But his son or grandchildren who occasionally housesit for him play music loudly and dance and have parties until 3am on school nights.
  • He and his wife pay for 2/3 of the utilities, while I pay for 1/3, even though they use much more heat and electricity because they have a much bigger house.
  • He and his wife only pay for 1/2 of the internet/cable. “Why not 1/3…?” “Oh, it doesn’t depend on usage.” I’m sorry, but if we’re splitting things like roommates, it’s per person, not per household. Everyone uses it, everyone pays for it.
  • And now that he’s been away for a month, he says he and his wife are only paying 1/2 the utilities instead of 2/3 since they haven’t been using them. What the fuck? Do I get to log every day I’m out of town and not pay for those? How about the fact that I’m not here from 9am to 6pm, but he is and is using the heat and electricity then? Again, I’m fucked and it’s my fault – the lease just says we’ll split the utilities, but doesn’t specify how. Fuck.
  • Cherry on top: He’s a creationist, and he found out I’m an evolutionary biologist, and proceeded to awkwardly try to debate me for 20 minutes after giving me the Comcast bill. I can only imagine what he thinks when sorting our mail and seeing all my stuff from the Secular Student Alliance and Secular Coalition for America.

My landlord is nice and grandfatherly, which sort of makes it worse because I can’t just channel all of my rage at him. He brought me oranges and invited me to Christmas – rage deflected!

But I’m not even sure I can wait until the end of August to move out. Technically I can get out of here if I can find someone to sublease it… Guess who needs to find some unwitting summer intern?

Lesson of the day: Don’t lease from something you randomly saw on Craigslist even if you’re moving across the country, and read your lease carefully.

I may be busy…

…but you can still get your fix of godlessness if you’re near Seattle!

The Secular Student Union at the University of Washington will be hosting Dr. Valerie Tarico this coming Monday, March 7th in Smith 115 at 5:30pm. Dr. Tarico writes about atheism and religion for the Washington Post and is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light. She’ll talk for approximately a half hour on Recovering from Religion (getting rid of old embedded messages; dealing with family and friends who believe) and then guide a group discussion.

Everyone is welcome! If I’m going while still losing my mind preparing for my research reports and studying for two exams, you better be there too!

And if you know any UW students who may be interested…especially tell them. We’re trying to get our membership up, and I think this would be a great first meeting.

Overheard at the post office

It’s hard to convey tone through text, but keep in mind both of these guys were light hearted in this conversation:

Guy: I need some stamps, what kind do you have?
Employee: Well, we have the bells, the holiday ones, and then the godless ones.
Guy: Godless ones?
Employee: Yep! *shows him some holiday stamps with pine cones and other nature-y things on them*
Guy: I guess I’ll take two of the godless-
Employee: Two heathen stamps!
Guy: -and two of the overly religious ones.
Employee: Shhh, we’re not allowed to say that.

I giggled. Definitely a “No Jen, you’re not in Indiana anymore” moment.

That and the fact that a young woman wearing a cross necklace happily helped me stuff 21 copies of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas into envelopes as I was frantically trying to get in before closing. Hooray for Seattle.

Help Ask an Atheist!

Remember earlier this month when I congratulated Seattle’s Ask an Atheist television show for sweeping its channel’s awards? Well, unfortunately that channel is going to be dead come December 31st thanks to a lack of public funding. Ask an Atheist doesn’t want to die with it, so they’re asking for some help. They’ll be moving to commercial radio (KLAY 1180 AM in Lakewood), but that takes some money. You can help them in two ways:

1. If you’re a fan of the show but not near Seattle, you can donate. Remember, you can watch all of the episodes online!

2. If you’re in the Seattle area, there will be a comedy benefit show in Tacoma on December 9th. What’s not to love about godless humor that helps a good cause?

Don’t you want to be able to say you helped fund the first commercial atheist show in the country? You know you do. Or at the very least, you know you want to keep me supplied with local godless inspiration. Everybody wins!

Snowpacolypse 2010!

That’s what Seattlites are already dubbing last night. Only two inches of snow fell in my neighborhood, but I’m reevaluating my Midwestern instinct to heckle. When your city is hilly and severely deprived of snow plows and de–icers, this is the result:

My favorite “Oh nooooooooooo” moment is when the bus appears around 3 minutes in, and proceeds to fail. I road the bus home last night, but thankfully my route didn’t need to conquer any major hills.

Because the roads are basically made of ice, school was canceled. You know it’s bad when universities aren’t even sending their grad students in. Of course, I’m used to living in Indiana, where we have an army of snow plots ready to make the road spotless at the sight of a single flake. The only time school was canceled for us was when the power went out because of a storm. Ah, the fond memories of walking to class in below zero weather during a blizzard.

Instead I’m huddled up next to my not-very-effective space heater in my much-too-cold basement apartment preparing for my trip to Canada. I was planning on leaving Thursday morning, but now I’m a bit worried about the weather forecast:I was already worried driving on Thanksgiving Day and dealing with crossing the border, but now there’s going to be rain and snow too? Gah. I just hope I get there in one piece. If I don’t make it to my talk on atheism and feminism, I’m sure people would be happy to have an open discussion about atheism and skepticism for the ten billionth time.

EDIT: I’d just like to add that I’ve heard at least three different sirens during the time it took me to write this post. Snowpacolypse chaos!!!