Ian Pierce

Tag: attack and dethrone god

  • how i spent my saturday

    I had a pretty eventful Saturday, and I figured it might be nice to share some photos from it. As I’m sure people are aware, the No Kings protest went on across America, from massive cities to tiny hamlets, and Seattle was no exception. I went to check it out and show my support in the fight against fascism, and it was a great time. I’m so glad that across the country and the world, there were no violent incidents at all. I worried that if some idiot tried to start some shit, the right-wing media (and probably a lot of the mainstream media too, let’s be honest) would be trying to paint this movement as a violent insurrection no matter how small the incident was. That’s how they did after George Floyd’s murder, after all. The fact that they decided to drop the “scary violent Hamas Antifa Marxists” angle for a “these are just a bunch of old white people” argument just shows how successful we were in puncturing their bubble.

    First off, before heading to the Seattle Center for the protest, I had to get there. The Link was already crowded by the time I got on, and got more and more crowded with every stop.

    After I got off at Westlake and grabbed donuts and coffee at Top Pot, I made my way up 5th Avenue towards the Seattle Center. By that time the speeches had been going for about an hour, but there were still plenty of late arrivals.

    Then I finally arrived at the west lawn of the Seattle Center, where the speeches were being held. Back in April, I went to an earlier protest at the same site. There had been a lot of people there: tens of thousands.

    This put all of that to shame.

    I literally couldn’t fit through the crowds of people to see my representative, Pramila Jayapal, speak. I have been in mosh pits with less density. It was glorious.

    But we had only barely begun. It was time for the march down 5th Avenue towards downtown. The atmosphere was excellent. It was like a parade, which is exactly what it should have been. The best way to fight anger and hatred is with love and joy, and there was so much of both in that march.

    Even my axolotl brethren came out of the canals to join in the fun!

    We passed under the monorail tracks, waving and cheering every time a train went by. I sang verses from the Monorail song from the Simpsons episode “Marge vs. the Monorail”, much to the amusement of nearby fellow nineties kids.

    As we approached the convention center, I broke away from the crowd because I had plans to hang out with a friend at the Oddities and Curiosities Expo. When I arrived at the convention center, it was easy enough to follow the steady stream of alternative kids to the show floor, where plenty of strange and wondersome artifacts were on display for our purchasing enjoyment, from the bones of beasts…

    …to snakes in jars and butterflies in boxes…

    …to beautiful art and apparel in any color you want, provided it’s black…

    …to taxidermized beasts of many varieties.

    I ended up buying a shirt with the Sigil of Baphomet and the legend “KEEP ABORTION LEGAL”. My friend wasn’t quite so lucky. She ended up spending nearly $200 on fox skulls and various other bones. Still, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Seattle Saturday, from coffee and donuts in the morning to bottled snakes in the afternoon, together with friends old and new.

    ~ Ian (listening to Psychotic Banana by Hand of Juno)

  • do you ever just think about HOLES?

    Due to a combination of apathy and shame, I haven’t been to the dentist in years, and as such, my teeth are extremely fucked. That’s always my problem. I go for so long without visiting the dentist that I build up this extreme paranoia about going in for a routine cleaning, perhaps because I think the dentist will judge my moral fiber and overall value as a person based on my teeth’s decrepitude (and naturally, the opinion of a medical professional who I see every six months or so should naturally be valued more than those of my family, friends, or coworkers). At the point where carelessness tips over into embarrassment, it’s impossible to stop, until my teeth are riddled with holes like worms in the timber of an old-fashioned sailing vessel and beginning to fall out of my head.

    Intelligent design is a dumb concept for a lot of reasons, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that whatever creator god you believe in is a terrible engineer, and any reasonably clever eleven-year-old could build a better solution for the given problem. I wonder what proponents of intelligent design must think their creator’s thought process must have been when making teeth. I imagine it must have gone something like this:

    INT: GOD’S WORKSHOP UPON THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: I have developed “teeth”, which the beings that I have created in My image shall use to crush and render the organic matter that they require to sustain their metabolism. They shall be made of the hardest material in their bodies, and will last for tens of thousands of years, provided that they are not wet and covered in food residue, which is exactly the environment in which they shall primarily be utilized. If damaged, they cannot be healed or replaced, and injuries to them can result in intense pain, dismemberment, or death.

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: …

    ALL KNOWING, POWERFUL, BENEVOLENT DEMIURGE: Fuck it; let’s ship it.

    It’s especially frustrating because there are so many other animals that have far better dentition than us idiot humans. For example, if we were really intended to be the culmination of the Creator’s design for the cosmos, maybe they could have chosen one of the following other options that they have provided for other organisms:

    1. Have teeth that are constantly being lost and replaced over the course of our lives, like our friend the shark do
    2. Have very long teeth that are continuously extruded from our gums and worn down as we chew our food, like our friend the horse do
    3. Have enamel reinforced by LITERAL IRON, like our friend the beaver do

    In addition, if we chose that latter option, we would have dental appendages in a vibrant shade of orange, which in addition to being evolutionarily practical, would be stylish in a vintage, midcentury sort of way.

    I have many other bug reports to give to the creator of the universe, if I turn out to be wrong and I will not be consigned to endless oblivion if I happen to breathe wrong for, like, two minutes. Currently the teeth stuff is highest priority, but I’m sure that might change the next time I play soccer and line up to block a free kick. Unless there’s an absolute cosmic necessity that my testicles cannot produce sperm unless they are several degrees COOLER than my core temperature, thus requiring me to carry them around in a sack outside my body for my whole life. But I shouldn’t question. It’s probably all part of God’s plan.