indessed roscivs

I’ve never been particularly proud of my home state of Arkansas. I like it and all—it’s particularly beautiful in the fall—but I wouldn’t want to live there myself. The summers are too hot and humid, and I really do like the big city lifestyle. Little Rock just doesn’t cut it. But last week, my home town made me proud.

You may have heard of Westboro Baptist Church, the Jesus-loving folks who picket military funerals and protest at various events with signs such as “Fags Doom Nations” and “You’re Going To Hell”. It turns out that on September 19th, the National Conference of Editorial Writers, a nonprofit group of professionals that exists “to promote high standards among opinion writers and editors”, was having a conference in Little Rock. The WBC, of course, decided to show up with the usual signs and pickets to protest those evil editorial writers, who apparently are “responsible for the satanic milieu in this evil land”.

Well, it turns out that September 19th also happens to be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Now, the Central Arkansas Pastafarians, worshipers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, consider Talk Like a Pirate Day to be a religious holiday of sorts, as His Noodly Greatness has decreed that “full pirate regalia” is the official religious dress of the sect. So, these FSM-fearing Pastafarians decided to get to work.

Dressed (of course) in their official religious attire, both commemorating the holiday and showing their religious devotion, they staged a counter-protest. Armed with signs such as “God Hates Shrimp” (quoting Leviticus) and “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”, they “waved swords and growled ‘Arrghh!’ in a manner that would have made Abbie Hoffman proud.” (Arkansas Times)

With cars honking and waving at the pirates and a TV crew giving them all the attention, the Phelps group … picked up their “fag” epithets and went away.

From another blog’s report:

“They didn’t know what to do,” a pirate named Boatswain (aka Gerry Schulze) tells The Pitch. “We decided that the best way to handle them was ridicule. They had not earned our hatred, only our ridicule and perhaps our contempt.”

Thanks, Arkansas Pastafarians, for making me proud. May His Noodly Appendage bless you and keep you, Ramen.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.