Striking Out the Pitcher

A long time ago I revealed one of the dirtiest secrets about copywriters: we spend the majority of our time not copywriting.

That is, we're not clicking and clacking from the moment we step up to the keyboard to the moment we hand it off to an art director and say, "here, make me look pretty."

I suspect this is true for real writers as well.

Writing comes in spurts.

It's stop and go. Then it's stop and play some online chess. Or stop and check out who's eating what on Facebook. Or stop and look at the Google analytics and lament the fact that millions of people are not reading your daily drivel.

On one of these fanciful Facebook forays I ran across an Australian gentleman named Ken Hamm. Maybe you've heard of him. Recently Mr. Hamm did a Youtube debate with Science Guy Bill Nye.

Though he was backed by the power of providence, he did not win.

Ken is also in the news because deep in the backwoods of Kentucky (America's Think Tank) he is building a life-size replica of Noah's Ark. It will be, according to the website, "the largest timber frame structure in the USA."

It would have been the largest in the world, but some nut job in Belgium is working on a 14 story high Birdhouse.

As you can see from the schematic, the construction of the Ark is quite ambitious.

Ken is hoping to raise close to 30 million dollars for its construction. At least 3 million of that will be earmarked for the oversized bathrooms on the top deck, including a separate facility for the children, on the far left.

Apparently, while God is wiping out all of humanity for their collective sins and all the animals of the world have been herded on to a large open-air, floating petting zoo -- the predecessor to today's Open Office Plan -- it's important to have proper facilities to make a pee-pee or a doo-doo.

In addition to his Ark project, Ken Hamm is an ardent Creationist and accordingly scoffs at Darwin/Evolution/Science, or anything resembling reason. Choosing instead to believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

I've been to my brother's apartment.
He has leftover Chinese food that is more than 6,000 years old.

Naturally, like a moth drawn to a flame, I often find myself on Hamm's Facebook page. And even more often, I find myself trolling the threads and making smart ass remarks. It is, as the title of this piece indicates, so damn easy.

Of course any attempt to dissuade the faithful is completely futile. They tend to whirl themselves into a dervish frenzy with an impenetrable circle of logic.

"The Bible says there is a God. And it has to be true because God wrote the Bible."

Why bother, you might ask.

I like to think of it as a chef sharpening his favorite kitchen knife. It's part of the job.

Plus it's fun.

I don't care for cats. But give me a box of kittens and a strong laser pointer and I can entertain myself for hours.