Ah, I love crazy religious mail (click image for larger version):
Any guesses as to what a metaphysicotheologicocosmogynaecologist does? My first guess would be “annoys people with insane supernatural spam,” but the “gynaecologist” part is throwing me off. I’m not sure I want to know.
(Thanks, Jeff!)
Just to remind everyone that middle-eastern Muslim clerics don’t have a monopoly on crazy wackjobbery, here’s a new supernatural hypothesis from an American Christian minister:
It has been widely broadcast that the largest Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in the nation has been built in Houston, TX. This six story tall (six is the number of the flesh man*) abortion supercenter was opened in May, just a short time before the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster began.
And because Houston has other places that provide abortion services, that’s obviously the cause of the oil leak. Yep, air-tight reasoning, right there. And while I’m pro-choice, I think testing this hypothesis scientifically may have some ethical ramifications, sooooo…yeah, let’s just skip right to calling this guy a loon, okay?
He also rambles a bit about how “nice” Christians like Joel Osteen are ruining Christianity, and something about hurricanes and babies, but hell if I can figure it out. I just like this graphic he uses of a hurricane baby:
Aha! Proof of…um…something. Maybe an overactive imagination?
(Via Jezebel)
*WTF?
Friends send me strange sex-related articles all the time. I probably should be concerned what this says about my interests and personality, but I’m more intrigued by the articles themselves. I always think to myself, “Wow, nothing can be stranger than this.” I’m usually wrong.
Latest example: The cutting edge in cookbooks, Natural Harvest: A collection of semen-based recipes.
“Semen is not only nutritious, but it also has a wonderful texture and amazing cooking properties. Like fine wine and cheeses, the taste of semen is complex and dynamic. Semen is inexpensive to produce and is commonly available in many, if not most, homes and restaurants. Despite all of these positive qualities, semen remains neglected as a food. This book hopes to change that. Once you overcome any initial hesitation, you will be surprised to learn how wonderful semen is in the kitchen. Semen is an exciting ingredient that can give every dish you make an interesting twist. If you are a passionate cook and are not afraid to experiment with new ingredients – you will love this cook book!”
Uhhh…what a delicious looking…glaze?
…I think I suddenly became a vegetarian.
Plenty of religions are misogynist, but like to play it off as being in the best interest of the women (Burkas? Clitoridectomies? Forced childbirth? Totally for your own good, honey). But you have to give it to the Catholic Church for being honest:
“Three Catholic women’s communities in Washington state are being investigated by the Vatican. They were chosen for review as part of an extensive investigation into American nuns. The Vatican says it’s following up on complaints of feminism and activism.”
You know, I have a t-shirt that says “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” I think that is honestly the simplest definition for feminism – equality for women.
Splendid to know the Vatican is against that.
Instead of raging, I think I’ll let Tim Minchin take it away:
(Via Pandagon)
Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that I wrote a piece for the Daily Beast on the incredible response to boobquake. I focus on the emails and traffic I’ve been getting, the media coverage, the power of social media, and the silly things people have created in honor of boobquake. Go check it out!
For the people who love number crunching (or are too lazy to read the article), here are some fun facts. Since the 19th I have received:
– About 2,600 new Twitter followers (follow me!)
– About 1,000 new blog subscribers through Google Reader, doubling my total. Yes, in a week I received as many subscribers as I did in a year.
– 743 friend requests on Facebook. Not sure what proportion of those are male…
– Roughly 700 Facebook messages
– From April 19th to the present, 854,521 unique visitors to Blag Hag, with over 2 million pageviews. To put that in perspective, I used to get about 1,000 visitors a day.
Oh, and one more fun fact a friend brought to my attention:
My name was the 72nd most popular search on Google yesterday morning? …That’s just flipping insane. Wow. …Wait, “Hotness: Mild”? Did I just get burned by search engine statistics generator? Hehe.
Boobquake is almost upon us, which means the media is super interested in covering the end of the world. I just thought I’d let you know what shows I’ll be appearing on in the next twenty four hours, since they’re… uh, kind of huge. And if you need more motivation to watch, yes, I’ll be showing cleavage – at least as much as is appropriate for TV.
4/25:
11:10 pm WGN Radio Chicago – The Nick Digilio Show – Audio here!
4/26:
In the morning in your part of the world – BBC World Service – The World Today
7:00 am Canada AM – Video here!
9:00 am WGN Morning News
5 – 7 pm CNN – The Situation Room (I swear to FSM I’m not making these things up)
I’m also being interviewed by The Young Turks tomorrow night at 9 pm, but I’m not sure when it’ll be online.
For those at the epicenter of boobquake (West Lafayette, IN), we’re going to have a meeting on campus mainly so news outlets have something to videotape (information here). I know that Fox59 Indianapolis, WRTV6 Indianapolis, CBC TV, and WLFI Channel 18 will be there, and who knows who else. I also know that BBC Persia will be covering boobquake, with footage of the gathering in Washington DC and interviews with me, but I don’t know when it’ll be on. Keep an eye out for all of these things!
Just thought you’d like to know.
*faints in corner*
Holy crap.
So what started as a joke and somewhat sarcastic reply to the ludicrous notion that women’s immodesty causes earthquakes has now exploded. Seriously, internet, you scare and amaze me sometimes. The Facebook event already has almost 14,000 attendees (and 60,000 invited) in just over 24 hours. The wall is getting comments so quickly that I had to disable Facebook email notifications because my inbox was getting flooded. The twitter stream for #boobquake is updating so quickly that I can’t keep up. To top that off, I just got interviewed by the largest newspaper in Canada and some radio station in Ireland wants to interview me.
Because I made a boob joke.
Since this is probably only going to get crazier in the next couple of days, I want to make a quick clarification. This post is going to be far shorter than it should be since I am a student and I’m trying to finish homework and such, but I wanted to at least acknowledge what people are saying.
I just want to apologize if this comes off as demeaning toward women. To be honest, it started as silly joke that I hurriedly fired off since I was about to miss the beginning of House. I never thought it would get the attention it did. If I would have known, I would have spent more time being careful about my wording.
That being said, I don’t think the event is completely contrary to feminist ideals. I’m asking women to wear their most “immodest” outfit that they already would wear, but to coordinate it all on the same day for the sake of the experiment. Heck, just showing an ankle would be considered immodest by some people. I don’t want to force people out of their comfort zones, because I believe women have the right to choose how they want to dress. Please don’t pressure women to participate if they don’t want to. If men ogle, that’s the fault of the men, not me for dressing how I like. If I want to a show a little cleavage or joke about my boobs, that’s my prerogative.
I also hate the ideal of “big boobs are always better!” The cleavage joke was just a result of me personally having cleavage, and that being my choice of immodesty. And I thought “boobquake” just sounded funny. Really, it’s not supposed to be serious activism that is going to revolutionize women’s rights, but just a bit of fun juvenile humor. I’m a firm believer that when someone says something so stupid and hateful, serious discourse isn’t going to accomplish anything – sometimes light-hearted mockery is worthwhile.
Anyway, I’m not forcing anyone to agree with me. Maybe I am failing at Feminism 101, or maybe I’m just taking a different approach.
And to the scientists who are concerned with my methods – don’t worry, I fully plan on doing some statistics after the event. I know many earthquakes happen on a daily basis, so we’re looking to see if Boobquake significantly increases the number or severity of earthquakes. Or if an earthquake strikes West Lafayette, IN and only kills me, that may be good evidence of God’s wrath as well (I’m not too concerned). And yes, I know I need a larger sample size to make this good science. Maybe I’ll include Mardi gras in my calculations.
And yes, by teabaggers I mean Tea Party members. I think I rather have my Atheist Barbie Photoshopped with a pair of balls in her mouth* then be awfully transformed like she was:
Aaauuuuuugghhh nooooooooooooo! God, it’s not even a good Photoshopping job. At least I put forth some effort. He couldn’t even find his own Barbie to Photoshop, he had to go and add on top of mine! And then not credit me for it! …Well, I guess it’s good that he deleted the link to my blog, since I don’t want to be associated with Tea Party bullshit. At least someone else has already gone ahead and fixed it (and pointed out Atheist Barbie was originally from here):
Thank you, Sadly, No!, for pointing out that creativity and good work ethic are not traits of teabaggers.
Speaking of creativity and working hard, back to writing my thesis (almost done!).
*Though that does not mean you have to go do it. Seriously. Please don’t.
Dear Vatican,
I’ve noticed that recently you haven’t been doing so hot in the public opinion. Sometimes people think you can be too harsh on those that don’t perfectly jive with your views, or those that make you look bad. People didn’t like that time you excommunicated the mother and doctors of the 9 year old Brazilian rape victim. Or the fact that you prohibit contraceptives, putting AIDS stricken Africa at even more risk and negatively affecting women all around the world. Or the whole gigantic cover-up of mass molestation of little boys – yeah, that’s not going over so well. But I really have to give you props for finally forgiving a group of people that really deserved your apology long ago:
Thanks for having your priorities in order. Now that we know all we have to do to change your mind is produce “beautiful melodies” that “still give us emotions,” we’ll get right on that.
Sincerely,
Jen