We are nicely situated in our lovely hotel room in the Melbourne Hilton. Yay, showers! After 15 hours on an airplane, we need them.
There is no rest for the weary traveler, however. We’re charging out on the town shortly to visit the Melbourne Museum — if you’re interested, we’re meeting in the Hilton lobby around 1:30, or otherwise look for the flashing angry eyes of the mob of atheists at the museum at 2.
Breathless adventures await!
I have nothing to say except that I’ve been traveling since 10:30 Tuesday morning, I’m still in a big metal bird in the sky, and I want to get out. Now. But I guess I’ll wait until we land in Melbourne…in a few more hours. Gaaaaaaah.
That was really quick. The Salt Lake Tribune already has an account of my evening’s talk — it’s fairly accurate, too, since I did give a bit of a firebreathing talk.
Also, they have a number of photos online. I didn’t even notice, but I did kinda like this one.
I’m now picturing large numbers of Mormons reading the paper on Easter Sunday morning and hearing all about the ferocious atheists gathering in the city. Rah, us!
OK, here’s another one of me calling down atheist wrath.
Now you’ve seen the full range of the PZ Myers Experience.
The day started off with me wrecking my knee somehow. That was bad.
I spent most of the day lying down with an icepack. Swelling greatly reduced! That’s good.
Missed my chance to explore my old neighborhoods. Bad.
Recovered enough to hobble around campus before my talk. That was good.
Gave my talk, got a standing O (they’re desperate for atheists in Salt Lake City), and even better, got lots of sharp questions. Yay good!
Went out to the Red Iguana, a favorite old restaurant. It’s still there! It hasn’t changed, mostly! The food was delicious! All good!
I’m back in my hotel, leg propped up and iced again. Oh, well. Good to end on a calm and quiet note.
I just discovered a short write-up of an encounter I had at the Reason Rally with a gang of evangelicals.
Blake Anderson and I had a very pleasant talk with him. Blake invited him to his church again; Myers had already blogged on Blake’s earlier email invitation to him. He declined explaining that he liked to be polite in public but he could not be polite in church. He acknowledged we were being polite here. He asked, “Are they ridiculing you here?” We said they hadn’t been so far. He said, “They should be.”
Leave it to Christians to think that being polite was a triumph. They set the bar very low for themselves, don’t they?
I do like this comment, though.
In that short interaction, PZ Myers was quite charming, quite polite and warm, and at the same time quite intentionally insulting and rude.
It’s a gift.
It’s been a long time since I was last in Salt Lake City, and I’m looking forward to flying out there tomorrow. I know it’s full of weird strange Mormons, but they’re actually mostly nice people with wacky ideas, and the state itself is freakin’ gorgeous — we have very pleasant memories of raising young (godless) kids there.
I’ll be speaking on Saturday at 4pm in Orson Spencer Hall on the University of Utah campus. The topic will be The Good Atheist: Goals for the Godless 21st Century. Would you be surprised to learn that my definition of “good” does not include rolling over and playing friendly little puppy with the religious? There might be a little bit of fire-breathing in town Saturday night. Bring your Mormon friends!
Mondays aren’t bad—I’ve had the weekend to get ready and get some of the backlog cleared away, so I can go into class prepared and confident. Wednesday’s pretty good, too, since that’s actually the day with my lightest teaching load. Tuesdays and Thursdays, though, my morning is effectively blocked out with nothing but teaching, and then there are the committee meetings, and to cap it all off, there’s a seminar class from 5 to 6pm…and worse, by Thursday all the momentum I had acquired over the weekend is exhausted, and I’m scrambling to do the prep work for my Friday classes.
Friday is Friday, and you’ve got to love Friday. But Thursday…oh, man, it’s the armpit of the week.
And today is Thursday.
Never mind me. I just had to get that gripe off my chest.
I am a terrible person. After my busy weekend of travel this weekend, I get a phone call this morning to remind me of a planned doctor’s visit this morning…a visit I had to cancel because I’d completely forgotten to do the preparation.
That’s right. I gave up a colonoscopy in order to attend the Reason Rally and AA convention.
I hope David Silverman appreciates my sacrifice.
(Don’t worry, I’m rescheduling it for next month.)
I hear there will be a slick and professionally produced DVD of the talks from the Reason Rally eventually. For now, though, there’s lots of stuff appearing on youtube, including this recording of my talk. I haven’t listened to it — I simply can’t listen to myself without cringing — so if some cunning rascal spliced in a soundtrack from a Donald Duck porn cartoon, I wouldn’t know it. So I fling this out, close my eyes, and run away.
I’ve got to go give a completely different talk this morning, anyway.
1300 atheists unwinding after the Reason Rally and a long day of talks at the American Atheists National Convention leads to…costumes. Trekkies and a multitude of Jesi and Mohammeds. Loudness and alcohol. Raucus laughter and grand plans for world domination. Somehow I ended up in a strange hotel room late at night with a bottle of Jim Beam and a swarm of well-known godless folk you’d probably all recognize.
Regrettably, I had to extract myself from the scene and get some sleep, because today I must stand up in front of all those hung-over, weary atheists who are just now experiencing the symptoms of the creeping crud from standing in the rain for 12 hours, and talk coherently for a while. This is going to be a harsh day, I think.
And then…hurtling through the sky to Minneapolis! Long drive home! Frantic scramble to prep for tomorrow’s classes!
