Blue Moon Atelier Journal

Strange things are afoot.  As I reported to my sister-in-law by email yesterday, my husband and I are being made to be older than we really are:

'Yesterday, whilst paying for the shopping, the checkout girl said something that sounded like 'Oh, Zen yer fae', which had me wondering 'how did she know I was an artist, and, does this mean I should be painting Buddhist Faeries?'.  As it turns out, what she said was 'Oh, it's Senior Day', which resulted in an 11 dollar discount on our groceries and much gasting of flabber as Grahams and I realized she'd pegged him for an old codger (I was certain she must have thought I was just his young nurse or something like).  And then, as if Karma thought I needed a bit of a 'don't get shirty' jab, I went to the eye doctor today for my yearly exam only to be diagnosed with Presbyopia - which doesn't mean I've got religion all of a sudden, but instead that my near vision's going a bit squirrely and I am now in need of a prescription of bi-focals!  Karma wanted even more of a laugh at my expense though - I looked up Presbyopia online and found a Wikipedia article that explains that the word is derived from the Greek 'presby' meaning 'old person'.'

My sister-in-law, found this highly amusing, as I thought she would.  However...she's not far from 40 herself, bless.

I need a lie-down.

Please, any secularists and right-thinking Christians, have a look at PZ Myers' latest blog, and send a message of support as asked:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/fight_back_against_bill_donohu.php

All this stems from PZ's post about a bloke who didn't eat a communion wafer, but popped it into his pocket and walked out with it instead.  He's gotten death threats, has been accused of a hate crime (so, it's acceptable to eat, and later poo out the Eucharist, just don't walk out of church with it?), and as PZ says, 'it's a frackin' cracker'.  I don't know why the bloke didn't consume it - maybe he's on a diet or something, but the church's over-reaction is astounding.  And now, because PZ's pointed out how idiotic that over-reaction is, he is being subject to death threats, and a campaign to have him fired from his post at the University of Minnesota.  The original post can be found here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/its_a_goddamned_cracker.php