Getting ready for tomorrow’s Creation Museum trip!

I am sooooo excited for the Creation Museum trip tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to sleep at all tonight. Stayed up until 3 am last night, need to wake up at 5 am tomorrow, and I generally don’t sleep when I’m excited for something. That’s alright though. I’ll be wide awake from sheer excitement. And the super large coffee I plan on getting before we leave.

Just so everyone knows, here’s how it’s going to go down tomorrow. I am going to try to tweet as much as possible tomorrow. I also figured out how to send photos from my phone through twitter, so you’ll be getting little low resolution treats occasionally. You can follow me by going here. You do not need a twitter account to read what I post. Everyone at the Creation Museum will be using the tag #CreoZerg in their tweets, so you can go there to see what everyone else is saying too.

I’m not sure when my first official blog post will go up here. One, I don’t have a lap top, so I’m going to have to snatch one of my friends’s. Two, after the trip I have to drive to Columbus for the Secular Student Alliance conference (also excited for that, woo!), and I can’t exactly type while driving or in the middle of someone’s talk. So at the earliest, you may have a post around 4pm if we go somewhere with WiFi for food. At the latest, something will be up by 1am-ish.

And apparently my friends are placing bets on what’s going to happen tomorrow: how long we’ll stay in the museum until being kicked out (not getting kicked out to not making it in at all), how many atheists will get arrested (0 to 250), how much physical harm I’ll receive (threats to death), and how many kinky atheists hook-ups I’m going to have (not even going to try to explain that one). Thanks, guys.

Feel free to make your own predictions or create new betting categories in the comments.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I’ll be wearing my “Stand Back: I’m going to try science!” xkcd shirt. That won the most votes. Second place goes to my club shirt and nakedness, so I guess day 2 of the conference I’ll be going in my birthday suit. Have fun, SSA members!

This guy needs to learn the term "slashers"

From the New York Post (emphasis mine):

Guy Ritchie’s plan to put a gay spin on the relationship of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in his new movie about the detective and his sidekick could backfire.

Robert Downey Jr, who plays Holmes, has revealed the crimebuster will sleep with and have sweaty grappling scenes with Watson, played by Jude Law, in “Sherlock Holmes,” due out Christmas Day.

“We’re two men who happen to be roommates, wrestle a lot and share a bed. It’s bad-ass,” Downey told Britain’s News of the World. Added much-in-the-news Law: “Guy wanted to make this about the relationship between Watson and Holmes. They’re both mean and complicated.”

But Michael Medved, a former Post movie critic, says Downey and Law must be joking. “There’s not a seething, bubbling hunger to see straight stars impersonating homosexuals,” Medved told us. “I think they’re just trying to generate controversy . . . They know that making Holmes and Watson homosexual will take away two-thirds of their box office. Who is going to want to see Downey Jr. and Law make out? I don’t think it would be appealing to women. Straight men don’t want to see it.

…

*raises hand*

This man has clearly never talked to a straight woman who wasn’t a fundamentalist or an uber-conservative. Are you shitting me? When I saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes I flailed with girlish glee, which honestly doesn’t happen too often. But a Sherlock Holmes movie? With Robert Downey Jr.? And Jude Law? Dressed in period clothing? Bickering like an old married couple with homoerotic undertones? Fuck yeah, eye candy. I’ll happily shell out eight bucks for that.

If you could assure me Downey Jr. and Jude Law would make out, first I would cry tears of joy, then I would probably go back multiple times. As would a very large number of women (proof? go read the comments on this LJ thread). We’re the people who saw Brokeback Mountain for teh gay (actually didn’t like it, but that’s because I went for the gay, and I usually hate those kinds of movies). We’re the people who shat bricks of pure bliss when Harry Potter Book 6 essentially made Harry/Draco canon. We’re 95% of the people who read and write slash (homosexual) fanfiction – the straight gals, not the gay guys. We are more than enough to make up for the homophobes that would be scared away.

I highly doubt the movie will have anything more than homoerotic subtext, but that’s fine by me. Imagining what’s really happening it half the fun anyway. And if it wasn’t nearly 3 am, I’d have some insightful comment as to why straight women love homoeroticism, and how this mirrors men’s stereotypical love of lesbians. But it is 3 am, so I’ll just leave it at this:

Bow chicka wow wow

This guy needs to learn the term “slashers”

From the New York Post (emphasis mine):

Guy Ritchie’s plan to put a gay spin on the relationship of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in his new movie about the detective and his sidekick could backfire.

Robert Downey Jr, who plays Holmes, has revealed the crimebuster will sleep with and have sweaty grappling scenes with Watson, played by Jude Law, in “Sherlock Holmes,” due out Christmas Day.

“We’re two men who happen to be roommates, wrestle a lot and share a bed. It’s bad-ass,” Downey told Britain’s News of the World. Added much-in-the-news Law: “Guy wanted to make this about the relationship between Watson and Holmes. They’re both mean and complicated.”

But Michael Medved, a former Post movie critic, says Downey and Law must be joking. “There’s not a seething, bubbling hunger to see straight stars impersonating homosexuals,” Medved told us. “I think they’re just trying to generate controversy . . . They know that making Holmes and Watson homosexual will take away two-thirds of their box office. Who is going to want to see Downey Jr. and Law make out? I don’t think it would be appealing to women. Straight men don’t want to see it.

…

*raises hand*

This man has clearly never talked to a straight woman who wasn’t a fundamentalist or an uber-conservative. Are you shitting me? When I saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes I flailed with girlish glee, which honestly doesn’t happen too often. But a Sherlock Holmes movie? With Robert Downey Jr.? And Jude Law? Dressed in period clothing? Bickering like an old married couple with homoerotic undertones? Fuck yeah, eye candy. I’ll happily shell out eight bucks for that.

If you could assure me Downey Jr. and Jude Law would make out, first I would cry tears of joy, then I would probably go back multiple times. As would a very large number of women (proof? go read the comments on this LJ thread). We’re the people who saw Brokeback Mountain for teh gay (actually didn’t like it, but that’s because I went for the gay, and I usually hate those kinds of movies). We’re the people who shat bricks of pure bliss when Harry Potter Book 6 essentially made Harry/Draco canon. We’re 95% of the people who read and write slash (homosexual) fanfiction – the straight gals, not the gay guys. We are more than enough to make up for the homophobes that would be scared away.

I highly doubt the movie will have anything more than homoerotic subtext, but that’s fine by me. Imagining what’s really happening it half the fun anyway. And if it wasn’t nearly 3 am, I’d have some insightful comment as to why straight women love homoeroticism, and how this mirrors men’s stereotypical love of lesbians. But it is 3 am, so I’ll just leave it at this:

Bow chicka wow wow

Atheist bus ad in Iowa…oops, never mind

Not even 24 hours ago, Hemant posted a story about the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers succeeding in getting this ad on buses in Des Moines:
Aaaaannndddd now they’ve been taken down.

“When she met with us on May 27, we showed her the ads and asked if this could be controversial and she said she didn’t think so,” said the group’s president, Randy Henderson. “She thought it was a nice ad, a safe ad.”

The ads that went up on Saturday read, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

DART said it immediately started to receive complaints.”

Drivers said people weren’t getting on buses or getting off the buses because of it,” said advertising director Kirstin Baer-Harding. “So with all the calls, it wasn’t something we wanted.”

The signs came down on Aug. 4. Baer-Harding said they never should have gone up.”The ads mistakenly got put on buses,” she said.

She said DART has the final say on any advertisements and its board decided at the last minute that it didn’t like the content. She said the mistake slipped in amid last week’s chaos with the DART-pedestrian crash and the release of its first hybrid bus.

jk lol!!!!1!!eleven!!!

…

Ok, in a warped and twisted way, I can understand the controversy behind “You can be good without God.” There are religious people out there who sincerely believe that you can’t be good without God, and that suggesting so is corrupting the innocent souls of their children. That’s obviously a load of bull crap, but I can understand the public reaction.

But this?

How dare someone suggest there’s more than one atheist out there! How dare they put a serene cloud background on their ad! Don’t they know serene cloud backgrounds imply God, since he’s up in the sky?! They mocked us! They hate Christians! Dey tuk ar jerbs!

This, my friends, is why we need to have these ads. Not only to find each other, but to let theists know we exist. Only with repeated exposure, over many many years, will they start to realize the atheist next door isn’t such a horrible person after all.

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.

Blag Hag Swag is open!

EDIT: After a million people telling me CafePress sucks, I jumped ship at went over to Zazzle. Much better!

The CafePress store is open, with a delightfully cheesy name to honor my blog: Blag Hag Swag. I’m awful, aren’t I?

Right now all I have is the I (squid) Cephalopods merch:It’s currently available on shirts, hoodies, baby clothes, coffee mugs, a tote bag, and per Molls‘s request, a thong:I have to figure out how much money I’d make in the store before I start putting more designs up. CafePress has a really lame system. Let’s say I have design A and design B. I want to print A on coffee mugs, but I also want to print B on coffee mugs. Well, I can’t unless I buy a premium account. I can print A on a mug and B on a white shirt, but not both on the same type of object. Premium accounts cost 60 bucks a year, and I make about 2 dollars an item…so I guess I have to figure out if I could actually make a profit selling nerdy atheist stuff. Hmm.

What do you guys think?

I Squid Science

I needed something lighthearted after yesterday’s drama (which is apparently still continuing today) so I decided to make the PZ/Ham comic a t-shirt. Then I realized I accidentally saved over the large file, so I don’t have a shirt-quality image. Fudgenuggets. Don’t worry, I’ll redraw it as close to the original as possible – you’ll get your shirt soon!

But until then, I thought I’d draw something else for a shirt/mug/merch/etc:After seeing the comic, someone wanted a shirt that says “I (squid) the Creation Museum.” Not sure if I want to do that – most people will probably not get the reference and think of it as an endorsement of the “museum.” But I liked the image in my head. So what do you think? Would you actually be interested in buying this, and if so, what phrase would you want? I (squid) Science? I (squid) Biology? I (squid) Squids? Let me know!

How not to approach a blogger

I was really hesitant to mention this more than a single tweet, but Pharyngula picked up the story, so now I feel oddly obligated to comment.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post in reply to Pastor Tom over at Hard Truth who seemed to think atheists were taking over the internet. My reply got fairly popular at reddit (athiesm + internet humor + being female = reddit success, apparently). Unfortunately, this resulted in a hoard of atheists visiting his posts to leave comments with varying levels of trollishness, which pretty much solidified his beliefs that atheists were indeed taking over the internet (good job, guys). He wasn’t happy with this, including with me:

“A blogger on www.blaghag.blogspot.com also felt bashing me was worth her time yesterday. (I didn’t see her name on there) While she wasn’t nearly as hateful as the first blog I mention, she still did her best to minimize me for my beliefs.”

Really, I was bashing him? Minimizing him for his beliefs? I invite you to go read my original post and look over what I said. Probably the worst thing I said is that his post was “both silly and intriguing,” and then proceeded to disagree with him. Of course, if I’ve learned anything from talking to conservative religious people, it’s that disagreeing with their beliefs is probably the most offensive thing you can do.

Then he picked up the comic I drew about PZ and Ken Ham’s epic battle in the Creation Museum. I’m a little peeved that he posted the whole thing without my permission, but at least he linked back to my blog. His post was so bad that I didn’t even want to bother replying to it – literally every single sentence had something worth arguing with, and it wasn’t worth my time. I’m really not interesting in debating people who are obviously so set in their beliefs. But the very last paragraph really got to me (emphasis mine):

“And just so everyone knows, I will be [at the Creation Museum] when the thundering herd shows up, and I plan on talking to them and interacting with them as much as they will allow, and if they lie on their blogs, I’ll be right here to point it out. So PZ, I can’t wait to see you, Jennifer, and the rest of your loyal subjects, and that’s the HardTruth.”

To be honest, this scared me. No, not the cheesy ending of “that’s the Hard Truth” after every one of his posts. Generally when random uber-conservative evangelical internet strangers say they’re going to find you and meet you, that causes a healthy paranoia in a person, especially a 21 year old female. Especially when said female was just angsting about how her overprotective father didn’t want her to get hurt by religious crazies during her trip. I didn’t want to blog about my fear, since it seemed like he read my blog, but I did tweet it:

“First theist just called me out and said he’s going to personally meet me at the Creation Museum. A little freaked out. http://bit.ly/EJZ58“

And…then he found my twitter account and commented:

“@jennifurret C’mon Jennifer, no need to be freaked out. I just want to say hello.”

Yeah, sorry, that kind of freaked me out more. I mean, it’s not like he stalked me – my twitter feed is clearly placed on my main page. But the way I read “I just want to say hello” in my head was really not helping to assuage my fears. I told myself to think positively about this. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt: normal, kind person until proven scary.

Me: I’m going to tell myself he’s just a nice preacher man with a family
Mark: So a rapist and a pedophile?*
Me: gaaaaaaaahhhh shut up shut up
Mark: I’ll be around, don’t worry.
Me: Great, my protection consists of a Jew, a gay, and a girl gamer. That sounds like a bad joke.

I really don’t think Pastor Tom is a bad guy – I know he reads my blog, so I don’t want him to take this post the wrong way – but I think you can understand my nerves. I’m a new blogger, and I’m always a bit paranoid about how what I say here can affect my every day life. And I’m not going to the Creation Museum for a big debate. I don’t want to roam the exhibits trying to refute everything and annoy the other patrons. I just want to have some chuckles with my fellow nonbelievers and get my photo taken riding a Triceratops. I am a bit proud that I was singled out in the same sentence as PZ – what an honor! That gained some applause from my club members yesterday, and according to a Pharyngula commenter I have now elevated to the status of Unholy Woman. Woo!

I’m still excited for the trip this Friday, but I think I’m going to be moving myself to the center of the herd.

*I really shouldn’t have to put this disclaimer here, but since this will probably be read by religious people…no, my friend Mark and I do not think all religious people are rapists and pedophiles. He was making a joke just to freak me out more.

Atheism is boring

Wait, what? Mark pointed this new Post Secret entry to me:
I had to pause for a moment to consider what this person meant. Atheism, boring? My best guess is that they mean since there’s no preordained meaning to life, no grand scheme, no “end goal” of eternal paradise, no supernatural occurrences…that that’s boring. Of course, I’m going to have to disagree. I think knowing that the world was formed naturally and that we’re lucky enough to be sentient in it is pretty damn amazing.

Is this any more boring because I know the chemistry and physics of stars, not that they are angels in heaven?Is this any more boring because I know basic principles of geology formed it, not God?Is this any more boring because I know it evolved, not that it was created?I know I’m preaching to the choir (ha), but I don’t need an invisible man in the sky telling me what I should find meaningful. I find plenty of things beautiful and inspiring all on their own. Maybe that’s just because I evolved to have certain images and events trigger certain chemicals in my brain to make me feel good, but isn’t that in itself amazing?

But maybe I could be off. Maybe it’s the real world consequences of atheism that they find boring. Not going to church, not having holidays, not having local events. Even there, I think I’d disagree. I think even most theists find church boring, so that’s no great loss. Many holidays have totally lost their original religious connotations and can be celebrated even though you’re an atheist (I look forward to Christmas every year!). And the loss of community problem is shrinking with the more active atheist organizations we see popping up around the country.

Or, knowing the demographics of Post Secret, maybe this is some young person who called him or herself “atheist” because it’s “cool.” I’d like to pretend this isn’t happening, but there are more and more “atheists” who can’t give you a single logical argument why they don’t believe in God – not because those arguments don’t exist, but because they haven’t given it any thought. I can imagine some punk atheist kid (hell, how old am I, 80?) suddenly finding “atheism” boring and going back to angels and miracles and dudes rising from the dead.

Of course, this is all just utter speculation and could be complete BS. I probably shouldn’t try to interpret Post Secret cards so deeply. What do you guys think?

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!