…and this is a 
Another fair vignette
Category: Local
Posted on: August 13, 2006 5:00 AM, by PZ Myers
So, I'm working the DFL booth at the fair. Anyone who has done this kind of thing before knows you spend a lot of time just sitting there, trying to look open and inviting and friendly, and you end up staring across the aisle at the booths on the other side. The two directly across from me were these:
Morris Life Care Pregnancy Center
This is one of those rinky-tink pseudo-Planned Parenthood outfits that provide some prenatal care (which is commendable), but really exists for their primary function: scaring people out of abortions. While I like adorable babies as much as anyone, I consider these kinds of organizations fundamentally dishonest, and clearly not actually as interested in the welfare of the woman as they are her transient zygotic payload.
Something for the Soul: the Mystical Place for Healing
Crystals and angels. Enough said. Enough, I said. Don't make me relive it.
Most of you readers know me well enough. Was this a horrible form of torture, or what? Every time I looked up, I could let my eyes fall on the religious blastula worshippers, or the woo-woo crystal healers with the cherubim. It was like a standing dilemma: which one was crazier, more remote from reality, and more representative/more damaging to the local culture? The Mystics were probably more likely to vote for the DFL, and I also couldn't decide whether I should consider that a good thing or a bad thing.
Don't worry, I was well behaved and didn't confront either of them. Revulsion trounced temptation.
Comments
You're a better man than I am, PZ. I would have had a hard time not lobbing various things found on the fairgrounds over at their tents. But then, that's me.
I admire your restraint.
Posted by: The Disgruntled Chemist | August 13, 2006 5:08 AM
PZ wrote:
Fair's fair, you can console yourself with the the thought that they were looking, albeit unwittingly, at a blastula butcher...
Posted by: Ian H Spedding | August 13, 2006 8:54 AM
DFL?
Posted by: RPM | August 13, 2006 9:09 AM
Decapodiformes Freedom League. Of course. What else? ;-)
Posted by: Russell | August 13, 2006 9:14 AM
Looks like the set up will teach people that science is just one possible view of reality. I wonder how many would like to fly in "faith-based" plane. (Or pray in a church constructed on "faith-based" engineering).
Posted by: oldhippie | August 13, 2006 9:15 AM
> DFL?
What they call the Dems in Minnesota - "The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party"
Posted by: waldo | August 13, 2006 9:19 AM
And the Republican Party in Minnesota does business under the moniker "Independent Republicans" -- or have they given up the IR fig leaf? The DFL comes by its name more honestly, since it represents a historic coalition of progressive and populist forces in the state.
Posted by: Zeno | August 13, 2006 10:24 AM
Yep, they sure would pray in a church built on faith-based engineering. Or, they would have if it didn't fall down first.
Posted by: Buffalo Gal | August 13, 2006 10:28 AM
PZ:
The last time I went to the Fresno Fairgrounds for a 'home show' there was a booth peddling lamps made from '200-million-year-old Himalayan salt crystals'. They put out a fair amount of coral-tinted light, and I would've bought one, except their sales pitch vaguely implied some healing powers.
I asked the proprietor if he was aware that the Himalayans did not exist 200 million years ago, but were rather a more recent product of the collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates. The question seemed to baffle him. Oh, and as usual I had to be dragged snarling away from the 'Right-To-Life' booth in another exhibit hall. So, yeah, what can I say? I don't just feel your pain. I've lived it.
Sigh....Scott
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | August 13, 2006 11:23 AM
The Republicans gave up the independent several years ago, about when the serious bible thumpers seized real contol of the local party and all the more secular/progressive Republicans quit the party. I think it was right around the Contract on America mid term in 94.
Posted by: Shane Hotakainen | August 13, 2006 11:36 AM
Be strong, PZ. In related torture, I seem to recall you posting on the Minnesota study that found we atheists are the scariest people in the universe, well ... see this clip over at Norm's place.
Posted by: CJ | August 13, 2006 12:29 PM
Demented Fuckwits are Losers?
Posted by: Carlie | August 13, 2006 1:41 PM
It's enough to make a grown man develop a spontaneous case of Turrets (sp) syndrome.
Posted by: JamesR | August 13, 2006 2:50 PM
Turrets syndrome sounds like it would involve a fair amount of high-powered automatic weaponry.
You may be on to something there...
Posted by: redbeardjim | August 13, 2006 3:39 PM
I laugh, thinking of 109 mm epithets spewing from a tank.
Posted by: JohnnieCanuck | August 13, 2006 4:24 PM
What is really dishonest about those people is that they go to great efforts to prevent abortion, but once the child is born they are no where to be found. They make a lot of claims that people will help the prospective mother, but once things come to fruition they are outa there.
Posted by: jim | August 14, 2006 12:10 PM