Words can hurt, but actions hurt more
Dear Matt Birk:
Most of my friends don’t know it, but I’m a football fan. I have followed the Vikings for my entire life and when you were our center, I proudly wore your jersey when I attended games. When you left Minnesota for Baltimore, I understood your decision completely. That is the nature of the game. Your favorite players move on. I may not be a fan of the Baltimore Ravens but I can’t deny I would love to see you win a Super Bowl.
I was saddened, therefore, to read your Op-Ed piece in the Star Tribune supporting the amendment to ban gay marriage in the State of Minnesota.
I wasn’t surprised to learn that you are against gay marriage. I fully expect that most of the athletes in the National Football League share your opinion on the subject. Players like Chris Kluwe, who speak out in support of marriage equality, are relatively rare.
My First Author Reading!
Hey everyone! I’ll actually be taking part in a public reading of something I wrote this October.
Specifically, I will be joined by five other contributors to “Atheist Voices of Minnesota” at the Roseville Barnes & Noble at 7:00 PM on the 10th of October. We will all read from our work and answer questions and once you have been dazzled by our writing, you will have the chance to buy the book (conveniently pictured in this very post)!
If you can’t make the reading, you can still buy the book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.com in paperback form or for your eReader.
But you really should come out and see this. It’s probably the first and last time you’ll have a chance to see me doing a public presentation where I’m completely out of my element!
If you’d like to know about my other creative endeavors, you can always check out my Upcoming Performances page.
Shit that Pissed me Off This Week – 9/28
A Story from Inside the Westboro Baptist Church
The Story is one of the finest radio programs on the air. Dick Gordon is one of the best interviewers I’ve ever heard and he finds amazing subjects every single episode. If I didn’t have a life, I would be listening between 9:00 and 10:00 PM every night.
This week he interviewed Nate Phelps, one of Fred Phelps’ sons. I’ve said for a long time that I’m going to maintain strict radio silence where the Westboro Baptist Chuch is concerned because talking about them gives them power and attention and that’s exactly what they want. I’m breaking my vow of silence to talk about the one thing we don’t really understand about these people.
Listening to Nate talk about the history of intellectual and physical abuse that he was subjected to at the hand of his father, I came to understand the tragic nature of the world Fred Phelps has created. He creates hateful, awful people by creating a world that makes that behavior seem normal.
Kids don’t think this without a trusted adult force feeding it to them
When you hear Nate’s description of that insular society, you almost feel sorry for the people who have been, quite literally, brainwashed into doing what they do. Worse, every one of them is being taught how to make sure the next generation does the same thing.
It’s a never ending cycle of hatred and we all feed into it by hating them right back. I wish I knew the solution. I wish I could figure out how to rescue these kids from the cycle of hatred and abuse that Fred Phelps has created.
I don’t know how to do that. I just fear that every time those hate filled people are met with (deserving) hatred and anger, we are perpetuating the problem.
You want to know how I define evil? Fred Phelps.
Alphabetical Movie – Jason and the Argonauts
About ten years ago, I took my first trip to the San Diego ComiCon. At the time, it was a relatively tiny 60,000 person convention.
If you’ve never been to ComiCon, it is quite the experience. These days they have 100,000+ attendees and I’ve ceased going because the crowds make it a nearly unbearable experience for me. No, I don’t really want to wait in line for 30 minutes just to go to a panel about Batman.
The first time I went, it was crowded but not “get me the fuck out of here” crowded.
Geeks Without God is all new!
This week over at Geeks Without God, we have an episode with Ronn Bauman from the Tortuga Twins that was so awesome, we recorded it twice.
Actually, what literally happened was I was a dumb fuck and when I was saving the introduction to the episode, I named the file the same thing as the episode and I overwrote the file. Turns out, that is just about the only mistake you can’t fix.
So we got together the following morning and recorded the podcast again. And we did pretty well. We don’t spend too much time talking about how we’ve said all of this stuff before.
Ronn is a big fan of our podcast and a terrific guest. He was so good, in fact, that we recorded a second episode with him that I did not overwrite! That one probably won’t air for a few months so for now, enjoy this one!
Hey Guys! Want to watch me perform way out of my weight class this week?
Thursday night at 10:00 PM, I’ll be a “Celebrity” guest judge for Theatre Arlo’s PowerPoint Karaoke.
As an improv structure/show, PPK is one of my absolute favorites. Bill and Melissa do a great job coming up with hilarious slides and they are always able to get a great lineup of comedians to assist. This week’s presenters are Jill Bernard & Eric Heiberg, Joseph Scrimshaw, Sharon Stiteler and Tim Uren.
I will be judging their comedic skills along with my other (actual) celebrity judge, Trace Beaulieu (he was part of a show you might have heard of and also currently works with Cinematic Titanic).
There is no false humility at work when I publicly wonder what I did right to appear on the same stage as these other wonderfully talented comedians. Frankly, I agreed to judge because I figured it was a great way to get myself into the show for free.
I know it’s a little late on a school night but I can’t recommend the show highly enough. The premise is funny. The slides are funny. The people are funny. They sell beer there. What’s not to like?
For information on other performing I do around the Twin Cities and on the web, you can always check out my upcoming performances page on this site.
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 9/21
Rick Santorum Doesn’t Like Smart People
We all know what I think of Rick Santorum, right?
Santorum basically believes the “intellectual elite” just want to run the lives of everyone that is dumber than them. He seems to believe that smart people are all mad scientists who believe that if the world will just submit to their will, we’ll all be a lot happier.
Yes! If I am successful, I will FORCE THE WORLD to never have cancer again! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!
The wave of anti-intellectualism in this country is staggering. It’s the reason people with no knowledge of biology will spend hours arguing with biologists about the evidence for evolution. Santorum is not the cause of this wave. He’s a symptom.
I can’t understand why anyone, Conservative or Liberal, wants to live in a country where we dismiss the brightest among us simply because they happen to be smart. Maybe I’m the only person who views Idiocracy as a cautionary tale.
I look at people like Rick Santorum and I think that he could very well represent the smartest of our future politicians. If that doesn’t fill you with horror, you are probably already too far gone.
New post over at Geeks Without God
I’m moving some of my “atheist blogging” over to the Geeks Without God website.
Today, I’m posting a blog that explores the “atheism is a religion” debate. I’ve talked about it a few times on this blog but the one thing I keep wondering is this: If Atheism is a religion, what isn’t?
Alphabetical Movie – The January Man
The January Man is a mess of a movie. It wants to be about a modern day Sherlock Holmes but it doesn’t spend any time establishing the main character as all that clever and gets bogged down in a whole lot of relationship subplots that are at right angles to the main plot.
But there is one thing about it that is relatively unique and that is the fact it is a serial killer movie in which we barely see the serial killer. Typically a serial killer movie is a cat and mouse story in which the audience, at least, is aware of who the killer is.
Grail Diary 