Let the hatred flow!

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.

Today is a holiday?

You know what that means — I get to spend the whole day catching up on grading and prep work for upcoming labs.

I scarcely know what “day off” means anymore. Somebody will have to explain it to me someday, but there’s no point now. Maybe when I reach that mythical state of retired, if ever that happens.

Oh! I did have a weird dream last night, that I had a massive abdominal tumor that surgeons cut out of me, and they proudly showed it to me when I was lying there on the operating table (of course I was wide awake and watching the procedure). It was marbled with fatty tissue and had tufts of blonde hair sprouting sparsely all over it, with a little knot of teeth at one end. They stabbed it with biopsy needles a bunch of times, sliced it open to show me all the pus inside, and then threw it into an incinerator. I said, “We have to name it Donald.” Then I woke up.

It was a very happy dream. Prophetic symbolism, you think?

An emblematic boat parade

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.

Close enough to that time of year

Hey! Suddenly everyone is talking about pumpkin spice, and I’m feeling ignorant — I’ve had pumpkin pie and other sorts of things, but I’ve never gone out of my way to find and consume those heavily advertised pumpkin spice drinks, and now I can’t because they probably add extra virus to them. So does anybody have any recommendations for stuff I can make at home to get into the spirit of the season? I have cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves, which is all you really need, right? I suppose proportions and quantity matter. Bonus points for ideas that use coffee or tea. I’m going to try and ingratiate myself with my wife.

What this really means, though, is that it’s time to haul out the giant spider and hang it from the porch, string up the spider lights, and maybe start projecting spider videos on the windows, to appeal to the kiddies, who probably won’t be coming around to our house at Halloween this year because we’re handing out extra virus with our candy. We’ll still make an effort, because needs must.

Yay! We live again!

Our glitch that killed the site for over a day has been corrected, and we’re back online. Of course, that means I have to find time this late in the day to create content.

Probably doable. I usually find something to say, although right now I’m all distracted with saying stuff about cell biology to students.

Be excellent to one another!

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.

It’s another week

My university stays the course, no changes in policy, although the number of COVID-19 cases in Stevens County are climbing, I’ve had students tell me they can’t come to lab because they’ve been exposed, and are under quarantine. It’s all so predictable, but we’re on cruise control.

The missives from on high are sounding just like this humor piece on Miskatonic University’s safety plan.

Thank you for submitting Miskatonic University’s proposed COVID safety plan. We have a few brief comments and questions.

Social distancing in classrooms
You write that “through queer and monstrous perversions of geometrical laws, students will be seated at blasphemous angles outside the curves of our dimensions, thus remaining safely six feet apart.” Please clarify whether safe distancing could be achieved without resort to “loathsome horrors beyond human conception.”

Food services
We agree that students need not wear masks during meals. However, please revise the final plan to say “while eating,” rather than “while slobbering and ravening with delight.”

Huh. I didn’t find it very funny.

Spider adventure time!

It’s been a rough week, and next week will be even rougher. I seem to have accumulated a collection of scheduled committee meetings. On top of that, I’ve got my first heavy dollop of grading to get done, and next Friday is a big math day which is always frustrating for some of the students.

So today I’m playing hooky and skipping town! Mary and I are heading north with a cooler to stock up on groceries, and to make a field trip to the ecostation looking for spiders. I shall emerge rested and refreshed later this afternoon, I hope.