Bad Pharyngula

Bad Pharyngula

In which I get PZ Myers to sign Phil Plait’s book, starting a trend.

Phil Plait and PZ Myers are in town for a Americans United thing, so they organized a meetup tonight. Naturally, I had to go.

Phil and PZ

As you can tell, I have a ways to go as a photographer. But this picture clearly shows that PZ does not breathe fire. In actuality, he shoots lasers out of his eyes. (Update, Nov. 11: see here for why Phil’s eyes are closed.)


I wasn’t the only one who brought Phil’s book (highly recommended, by the way) to have it autographed.

Those of you who followed the 2006 Weblog Awards may remember that PZ and Phil got a fake bad blood (bad ketchup?) thing going between them. So while I was waiting for Phil, I figured I’d ask PZ to write something disparaging in Phil’s book. He obliged.

Dedication 1 Half-title page[1]:

PZ: You know, there are much better books than this out there — couldn’t you get something with squid in it?

Phil: If only PZ would write a book, there’d be one more book out there that this one’s better than.
Dedication 2 Title page:

Thanks for coming to the blogger meetup, but you lose points for getting PZ to sign it first. — Phil Plait

Apparently I started a trend. People looked up when Phil shouted, “Hey! Is PZ autographing my book?” and after that, I think PZ had to sign everyone’s books, possibly including random books not written by him or Phil, and maybe even a menu snatched from a neighboring table.

And, of course, there was the meeting other people, and beer drinking, and chatting about every possible subject, and this thing that I understand you humans call “socializing” until 1:00 or so.

So, yeah. That was fun.

[1]: I looked it up, and yes, the page with just the book’s title is called the half-title page.

Addendum, 16:44: for those who were there and/or who care, the shows I was pimping were The Atheist Experience (available on Google Video) and The Non-Prophets (available exclusively on the Internet).

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