Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 10, 2016 • 7:34 am

It’s Sunday, I overslept, and I’m in Houston, which is infinitely larger than I remembered. It takes an hour to get anywhere here, and that’s by car: there’s little public transportation. I’ll be going back to Chicago tomorrow. My conversation with Dan Barker about FvF went well, I think, with surpisingly little pushback during the Q&A given that it was in Houston. It was almost a full house, and the conversation was great: Dan is a great interviewer and asked some good “devil’s advocate” style questions. Thanks to organizer John Barr for setting up this inaugural Lone Star College book fair, and for inviting me.

I’ll see Dan again, as well as Annie Laurie, at the FFRF convention in Pittsburgh in October, where I’ll be speaking.

Today is April 10, which you may not know is normally the 100th day of the year. But because 2016 is a leap year, it’s the 101st. On this day in 1912, the Titanic left Southampton on its maiden—and only—voyage. In 1919, Emiliano Zapato was assassinated in Mexico. On April 10, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (one of my favorite novels) was published in New York by Scribner’s, and on this day in 1970, Paul McCartney announced he was leaving the Beatles, ending the tenure of the greatest band in rock history. Those born on April 10 include Joseph Pulitzer (1847) and Paul Theroux (1941). Those who died on this day include Kahil Gibran (1931), much beloved of my hippie friends in college, Evelyn Waugh (1966), and Dixie Carter (2010).

Meanwhile in Dobrazyn, Hili has been very bad to Cyrus, but is unrepentant:

Hili: I’ve eaten your pâté.
Cyrus: Did she really do that?
P1040015 (1)
In Polish:
Hili: Zjadłam twój pasztet.
Cyrus: Czy ona naprawdę to zrobiła?
And here’s a photo I took on my flight to Texas, showing a beefy guy wearing a baseball cap backwards. I took slight issue with Stephen Fry’s claim that NO adult should wear baseball caps (though I don’t much like the look), but I totally agree with those who added, in the comments, that baseball caps shouldn’t be worn backwards. They just look DORKY that way, viz.:
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And they remind me of hadrosaurs, e.g.:
s-l300

 

30 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Wearing a baseball cap backwards automatically knocks 50% off the wearer’s IQ.

      2. Take that Sherlock Hat from the back of your closet, dust it off, and shear off the front peak.

  2. Late it is and knowing your location could start speculation that you had been abducted by one of those mega churches on Sunday morning, g*d forbid.

    What good does a cap do when on backward? Do they not know the idea is sun in the eyes. It’s stylish – like pants down around your knees.

  3. As much as I enjoyed your talk, somehow the highlight turned out to be meeting Don McElroy (former Texas Board of Education Chair, and current nut job).

    I leave it to our host to discuss his question.

    You should grab some Mexican Breakfast while you are here.

    1. McElroy came up to me with a copy of WEIT before the talk, and asked me to sign it. I was a bit taken aback (I knew him from his name, of course), but I signed it. He then handed me one of his pamphlets on the weakness of the materialistic view of science

      His question was simple. He asked Dan and me: “Are you trying to tell me that you two are just two big collections of molecules talking to each other?”

      My answer was short: “Yes.”

      2. Well, that’s one way of stopping them getting philosophical concepts like “fishslice” in edgeways between your words.

  4. Swimmers call all of these anomalous appearance-getters: ‘Mohawk Principle’.

    Mohawk Principle

    Anyone can get a Mohawk. It’s easy and you will be distinguished from your peers. However it is not the same as being distinguished by swimming faster than all your peers.

    Apply the Mohawk principle to everyday life and it is easy to remove dross from the consequential.

    1. Mohawks are cultural appropriation, and naming a negative character trait thus is not only culturally insensitive, it’s racist.

      Also, where was the Trigger Warning dude?

      And in case any special snowflakes are reading this, I better add: *Sarcasm Alert*

        1. Well now that you’ve admitted you have a problem, you can start to heal. 🙂

  5. Poor Cyrus. I am all in favor of baseball caps, but the only people who should wear them backwards are catchers. What I like is when I see someone outside, with their baseball cap on backwards, shading their eyes with their hand. If only there was some sort of hat that had a feature that would shade your eyes…. On the other hand, golf hats, which look similar to baseball hats, and have a cord running across the bill, are just stupid.

  9. I only wear my baseball cap backwards when I take flash photos (my cameras mostly have pop-up flashes on top of the viewfinder) or when taking a vertical format photo. In either case, the bill of the cap gets in the way. But then I immediately turn is back around, bill forwards.

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