Silly harassers

OK, you pests out there. Could you get some consistency? I routinely get odd magazines sent to me by someone subscribing me to them…I get a few issues, and then when I respond to their requests for money by telling them I didn’t subscribe to them, they fade away.

For a while, you were randomly subscribing me to gay lifestyle magazines. Then it was chicken fanciers, and I got a lot of information about building a coop in my backyard. Now it’s a bunch of motorcycle magazines.

Could you go back to the gay magazines? There at least I got useful grooming and clothing tips.

Although if I win the Free Harley Giveaway contest in this one, that could change.

I resign from the Atheist Papacy

All the time now, I’ve got people yammering at me about how I’m an awful, terrible, wicked person because I’ve become what I hate. I’ve got one guy calling me the “god of atheism”, another person calling me part of the “high priesthood of atheism”, illustrated with that lovely photoshopped image to the right. Then I’m accused of “believing [my] own press” and “thinking [I] can do no wrong” because my “swarm of mindless groupies” are all telling me my every word is golden.

You know, if I actually started believing my press, I’d have to go shoot myself. The only people lauding me as an atheist god or pope are the people who detest me; there are whole sites out there dedicated to spitting on Pharyngula, and my mailbox is full of missives telling me how arrogant/stupid/evil/ugly/Jewish/female (yeah, they think those last two are insults) I am, and very few praising what I’ve written. Here on my own blog, some people despise me, and even my allies nag and carp and pick at every phrase (which is what I expect). Ah, what I’d give for at least one blind, obedient minion who’d revere me as a deity…why, I might pay as much as a quarter.

You have to have a thick skin to be an assertive blogger on the internet; my primary input from the world is not that I’m coddled in a little bubble of approval, but that I’ve put myself in a prime position for every rock-thrower out there to take a shot at me. I don’t post with the attitude that I’ll get accolades for every word, but as an act of defiance.

And then we got complaints like that one on bitchspot, which dismiss every one who even partially agrees with me as “highly fanatical followers” who must “Stop being a groupie. Stop bowing before the altar.” That isn’t legitimate, valid criticism. That’s a kind of blindness in itself, treating everyone who might align themselves with my position as incapable of independent thought. It is a dishonest, dismissive tactic. What we have here is a horde of thoughtful, often angry people who think science, social justice, and the Enlightenment are good things, and are willing to fight for their causes.

Whining that I am an atheist pope is also incredibly dishonest, but OK, I resign. I’ll stop doing the things that make me equivalent to a high-ranking priest. I’ll give up my non-profit status. I’ll sell off my Italian villas and all their exquisite, priceless furnishings and art. I’ll give up the support of a well-established atheist institution, staffed with lawyers and professional apologists and PR persons. I’ll step down from my official position at the top of the atheist hierarchy. I’ll stop dogmatically pushing the infallible words of Charles Darwin on the populace. I’ll take off my uniform that grants me special privileges and respect.

I’ll just become an ordinary citizen, a guy with a blog. Will that do? Or is it expected that I also shut that down and be silent?

Because that’s all these baseless criticisms of my godless papacy are about: I’m already nothing but a guy with a blog, and there isn’t much more I can give up to satisfy these wanking whiners.

I agree with Larry

They used to call us the Statler and Waldorf of talk.origins, so you just knew whose side I’d take in this discussion of civility. There’s a place for it, but not in a battle with malicious fools.

When I use the word “IDiot” I fully intend to bash the IDiots for their stupid ideas. Why? Because their ideas are stupid and they really are idiots.

Passion and anger are two of our weapons. I’m not going to let the ninny nannies disarm us.

Skip Evans is gone

Well, shit.

An old pal from the days of talk.origins, and also formerly of the NCSE, Skip Evans, has died. He’s been active in the freethought community in Madison, Wisconsin, and now I really regret not looking him up last time I was out that way.

Skip was notorious for getting his hands on Kent Hovind’s Ph.D. dissertation. That’s the kind of thing he was good at: tearing up the creationists and leaving us all laughing.

Hello, Washington DC and CFI!

I’m going to be doing a bit of traveling again starting in August. I’ll be in Washington DC on the 18th, to do a fundraiser lunch for CFI-DC, and I’ll also be doing a talk later that afternoon. The talk title is “Life is Chemistry“, and I’ll be explaining why material causes are sufficient to explain this phenomenon we call life — no ghosts, spirits, souls, or magic Frankensteins in the sky to make it all happen.

Sign up for tickets now! Last time I was there they sold out.

Good work, Wife of Rieux!

You may remember Rieux, indefatiguable quality poster who wrote many good things here before getting overwhelmed by the volume of comments, and who more often now comments on various other blogs around these parts? He was at the CONvergence party this weekend, and he kept fretting that he ought to get home to his greatly pregnant wife, and I kept telling him things like ‘nah, she’s probably just sleeping, stay longer’ and ‘it’s your first, she’ll probably have a late delivery anyway,’ and I kept him around ’til 1 am. I was a cavalier jerk.

Well, now I learn that after the late night carousing, when he was probably all worn out, of course his wife went into labor the next day and delivered a robustly healthy baby boy. Now I feel guilty. Although probably with the adrenaline and the terror and the yelling, he probably didn’t fall asleep during his wife’s labor, so maybe it was OK in the end.

Returning to normal

Lot of dead air here lately, sorry about that. It’s a combination of factors: my laptop is dying (replacement has been ordered) and is no longer reliable, especially not for traveling…so it’s locked down in my office and confined to only light duties. But that means I’m away from home without a fully functional blogging computer. My work flow is disrupted! But I’ll be going home today.

Also, I was ambitious: I’ve done 11 panels at CONvergence so far (one more this afternoon), and co-hosted the Freethoughtblogs party, 8pm-1am, every night — actually, most of the work there has been done by Mary, who’s going to collapse once we get home, I think. My voice is gone, fried and frazzled, which will make this last session an ordeal. I think I’ll just point to the other people and have them do all the work, while I nap.

Anyway, Pharyngula will be back to normal by Monday. I hope. I think it depends on me getting my brain back on track. Fortunately I don’t need to talk to blog.