I haven’t told anyone else this, yet, but my sister is a mermaid. She assures me that it’s true, but I’ve never had a really good sit-down conversation with her about this, because as you might guess, this fact raises a great many deep questions in the mind of a biologist. I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand, though, since I’ve had my own strange obsessions with creatures of the vasty deep that might be indicative of some familial affinities. If she can be half fish, I want to be half kraken.

Anyway, I heard from her about a museum in Westport, Washington, The Mermaid Museum. While I have my doubts about the likelihood of a human-fish chimera, the place is part of the Westport Winery and Resort, and I think it would be a good idea, once this pandemic is over, for us all to get together and discuss the finer points of mermaid biology over a few glasses of wine.

I’m pretty sure that once I was a couple of bottles deep I might start conceding the possibilities. Ply me with seafood and I become very charitable.

We’ve lost the real Avengers: Diana Rigg has died of cancer (Patrick McNee died 5 years ago). The Avengers was one of my favorite campy weird TV shows in the 1960s, and Diana Rigg was the best part of the show.

Mrs Peel may have been a significant influence on the sexual fascinations of many of my generation. Nothing against Steed, but I didn’t watch it for him.

I’ve been getting repeated email along the lines of this rant below.

Revolutions and cowardice

PZ, you’re a coward, as are the rest of you deranged acolytes on your site! You trash this country as racist, sexist, classist, ableist, militaristic, capitalist, and call for a revolution to erase the stain of America, but you don’t have the guts to launch the revolution yourself! Terror Groups like FARC, ALN, and Boko Haram, while evil, are also courageous! They’re not cowards; it takes tremendous strength to stand up to the might of the US government, and even more to sacrifice yourself as a suicide bomber to kill American officials. You don’t have an iota of the mental fortitude that they do! And stop pretending you care about oppression. You leftists don’t see people as individuals but as organs in a body, that must work right or the whole thing will collapse! Collectivism is the cause of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and militarism, and you have never once attacked leftist organizations or their atrocities! You are a goddamned hypocrite!

You hear that, fellow leftists? Strap on your suicide vests and get out there and murderize masses of people because this angry right-winger (let’s call him “Phil”) wants you to. Phil sounds perfectly normal. He’s just trying to help the leftist cause by giving us good instruction in how best to achieve our aims, which mainly involves killing ourselves. Gosh, yeah, I was just waiting for Phil to give me the go-ahead.

Phil’s been sending me shotgun blasts of exclamation points for a while, and I mostly ignore them. But this one has a follow-up.

I’m planning on becoming a public commentator, in religion politics and other subjects.
If you defame me or slander me, as you have done Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Nugent, Mehta, Ali, and numerous others who sole crime is to reject your perspectives, I will sue you, asshole! I’d don’t know why these others haven’t done that already! Defamation is dangerous as is slander! Falsely portraying someone as a bigot can get them killed! Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a vegan leftist idiot, because leftist’s like you in his home country falsely claimed that he was threatening the safety, rights and security of Dutch Muslims, and Van Der Graft, the killer believed them! Its only a matter of time before the same thing happens to the people you’ve lied about! I apologize for not mentioning this my first email!

Oh. He’s planning on becoming a public commentator, because America, presumably, needs his cool, thoughtful insight. I don’t really know anything about him except his little missives that he slings at me, so it would be difficult to defame him more than I am by just publishing his words verbatim. Good luck with the public commentator gig if you think your own words libel you, Phil.

I’m missing an opportunity by not reading his email out loud, because I’d have to be very shouty and it would be hard on my voice. But especially that last sentence would be most appropriate screamed at a loud volume.

PZ, you are a deranged coward who ought to kill himself, but I APOLOGIZE FOR NOT MENTIONING THIS IN MY FIRST EMAIL!!!!!!! GOOD DAY TO YOU, SIR!! Yours, Phil.

45 loves ’em, so of course there’s another boat parade going on right now in Texas. Amusingly, though, the boats are sinking.

Multiple 911 calls have been made regarding boats being in distress, some sinking at the ‘Trump Boat Parade’ scheduled for Saturday afternoon on Lake Travis, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

TCSO confirmed with CBS Austin that multiple boats have been sinking and are in distress.

I hope no one gets hurt, but…heh. Heh heh heh.

I saw Bill & Ted Face the Music this weekend, and this is not a review. The movie is too stupid and goofy to warrant a review, and the plot does not have any logic to be explained, and the characters are all cartoons that don’t need analysis, so there isn’t much to say about it.

I still recommend it highly. If you need a dose of giddy optimism with a triumphantly cheerful ending — as we all do — it’ll do the trick, as long as you don’t think too hard about it. You wouldn’t be watching a Bill & Ted movie if you wanted to think, though, so that was a pointless point.

Billie and Thea are most excellent successors to Bill & Ted, though.