Top 10 things PZ Myers did to amuse himself last Friday

Wacky professor of spittle flecked invective PZ Myers was forced from the soothing reverberations of institutionalized hubris at that world renowned bastion of scientific achievement, UofM (Morris) to mingle with the hoi poli in Minneapolis.

Confused and angered by the crowds of people who had never heard of him, he took refuge in a coffee shop. Here's the top ten things PZ did to amuse himself and his fellow diners while he regained his composure:

10. Peered through a small space between his forefinger and thumb at people leaving the synagogue across the street, then quickly closing his fingers together while claiming "I'm crushing your head, haha!".

9. Colored his placemat completely ignoring the lines.

8. Cleverly dissected his walleye sandwich and loudly advised those present that "there ain't no god in here!".

7. Made a meat hat for a lady who said he was "kinda scary, but funny".

6. Searched the City Pages for his coded weekly instructions.

5. Used up all of the toothpicks to create pentagram place settings and then challenged "your god" to do something about it.

4. Made a intricate origami dioramas of sharks named Darwin eating fishes out of the napkins. (The meat hat lady said it was the best she'd ever seen).

3. Conducted impromptu experiments with Dr. Pepper, catchup, salt and pepper. Unfortunately the mixture did not spontaneously come to life (vigorous shaking didn't help either), but the meat hat lady said it tasted "pretty good".

2. Created sandwich board that said "The End Of The World Is Not Upon Us" "I Am The Only Sane Person In The World!" and marched back and forth on top of the counter.

1. Pulled the wings off of a fly and announced to his fellow customers that it was an entirely new species that had evolved right before his eyes.

An open letter for Steve Perry

I’m breaking my self imposed silence today because something has finally come up that is important enough, and has pissed me off enough for me to interrupt my otherwise busy life to write about.

An open letter to Steve Perry, managing editor of the City Pages:

The City Pages “Best of” edition came out this week, and included a new category.."Best cheap thrill". The hands down winner? Crystal Meth..aka: Crank. (No links..ever again)

Shortly after publication, a few people began complaining and the MSM got a whiff of the “meth joke”. Quicker than a tweeking 13 year old can snort up a big pile, CP Publishing Editor Steve Perry stepped in mellow the harsh his buzz had acquired with this arrogant, vapid, non-apology.

"Though it may come as a shock to talk radio tubthumpers and even a few of our readers, every Best of the Twin Cities issue we've ever done has contained items that were mainly satiric in intent. This is one."

Yeah, fuck you too Steve.

Now it is widly known that the people who regularly read your rag are among the densest fucking people on the planet (Need proof? Just take a gander at the comments they've let drool out of their ears).

But in addition to your gutter dwelling adult readership, there are unfortunately a lot of teen-age kids who have not recovered from the brain damage of youth and consequently find CP amusing.

And if you don’t believe that many of them will see this as yet another accreditation of yet another piss-poor life decision by you and your lefty ilk you are denser than your readership…which is a distinct possibility.

Incredibly, your bullshit doesn’t even hold up to your own standards. In case you’ve forgotten, your publication has been defending meth for quite some time...shall we take a stroll down memory lane? Yes, let’s do.

Remember this jewel from August of 2005?

Meth: Is it really Minnesota's biggest drug problem?

That's what the Star Tribune wants readers to believe. It's right there in the lede to today's explainer piece about about meth lab toxicity.

Without citation, reporter Karen Yousa bluntly asserts that meth is "Minnesota's biggest drug problem." Sounds scary. But is it true?

Not by most available statistical measures.

No? How about this from a year earlier:

Despite the rising number of meth-lab busts in the state, some experts think that the extent of the meth problem here may have been overstated.

"We may have the beginning of a methamphetamine epidemic. But the increases are much less in magnitude and scale than the increases we saw with cocaine in the mid-1980s," says Carol Falkowski, the director of research communications at the Hazelden Foundation in Center City.

Through the first nine months of 2002, Hennepin County medical examiners linked methamphetamine to a total of eight deaths--one
fewer than caused by the prescription painkiller OxyContin.

And yet meth remains uniquely reviled.

Poor, poor meth; misunderstood meth, honest meth.

Let me lend you a clue motherfucker.

I’m a biker; been a biker all my life. Crank and bikers have had a long acquaintance, due to the fact that while under its influence bikers are able to do the kinds of things bikers like to do longer with increased gusto.

During the 1980’s in California, I knew guys who were making crank, and I knew lots of guys who were using it. A lot of those guys ended up really, really fucked up.

They lost their minds, their health, their teeth, their homes, their wives and children and quite a few lost their lives.

Today, I don’t know anyone who is still using that shit; not a one. Any one who managed to survive could spell it out for you real clear asshole: This shit is no fucking joke!

The cranksters of yesterday are either dead or have finally given up tweaking; either way, it cannot be said that anyone of those guys needs to have any tears shed for them..I'm sure not going to bother.

They were all big (some very big) boys and knew what they were doing, they were also warned by some of us and chose to continue their tweaking until they paid the price.

But today the picture is different which brings me to my point.

Besides the brokeback rodeo crew (who, by the way I suspect have something to do with your continued defense of meth), the fastest growing demographic using meth these days are teen-age kids; the same kids that I mentioned earlier make up a portion of your clueless readership.

Now, I could wish that one of YOUR kids would show up home fried out of his or her fucking skull, but I don’t. You deserve the wracking pain that would cause you, but your kids don’t..they have a tough enough row to hoe seeing as they are saddled with a gaping asshole such as yourself for a parent.

Maybe it would be educational for you to run across one of your readers in a dark parking lot while he is on the down stroke of a two week binge; someone who hasn’t had an hours sleep in the last 48; someone who hasn’t had anything to eat other than Budweiser and crank stew; someone who is convinced he has been battling grave ghouls to the death for the past two or three days and upon seeing you realizes that you look like death warmed over yourself…talk about a joke, now THAT would be funny!

I do wish at the very least, that someone in CP’s chain of command would step up to the plate and shit-can your sorry ass. And I wish that you would find yourself unable to find any job that had anything do with journalism closer than writing used car ads.

Unfortunately, I’m sure that won’t happen. It’s got to be hard to find someone with so little self-respect as to take editorial control of such a putrid piece of shit at the City Pages.

As for myself, I will no longer allow the CP into my house even when we run short of toilet paper.