I'm on a billboard!

warning, fairly liberal use of personal opinions

Let me make one thing clear: I hate religion. I hate having conversations about it. I hate how confident billions of people in the world are about how their  God is 100% the correct one, and that everyone else is wrong. I hate that if you make a joke about it, people get offended. I hate how people use religion as a justification for their own actions. I hate how one of the candidates for the Presidency of the most powerful country in world believes that he will get his own planet after he dies (that's not a joke). But above all, I hate how religions deny factual evidence of anything in (relatively) recent discoveries just because it clashes with their beliefs.

Religion, more than anything, is a topic that annoys me to no end, and I've lived the recent years of my life avoiding talking about it whenever possible. Well, I should say I did avoid talking about it, until I found myself in a rather unique scenario after having a conversation with my dad on the phone about a month ago. The conversation went as follows

"Man, do I have a crazy story for you" My Dad tells me just seconds after I got out of bed
"What's up pops?" I replied
"So there's this conference next month with Richard Dawkins, and this group I'm a member of (the FFRF) is trying to promote their national conference."
"That's great pops..."
"No no, it gets better. So they need models for their billboards to promote their conference, and since I'm a member, I got a request. I didn't really want to do it, so I forwarded it to your brother (Brent). He replied, and they told him to come up for a photo shoot for this Weekend!"
"What the shit?"
"Yeah."
"Well, what do they think about having a pair of brothers on that billboard"
"I don't know" replied my dad "But you should ask them"

And ask them I did. Well, my brother actually asked, but I was told to come up to Portland to join in on the shoot.

We went to the shoot up in NW Portland at some guys apartment. Upon seeing the door that labeled "FFRF," indicating that we were in the right place, I kind of wanted to leave.

It's a trap

I told my brother that this looked like a prime location for a double homicide. Nonetheless, we still entered (although I went in a few feet behind him). Steve Etling was the photographer,  He was very professional, with thousands of thousands of dollars in camera equipment and a studio in his garage.

We spent maybe 2 minutes with goofy pictures and poses, a few minutes of smiling pictures, then signed a waiver and that was that.

It's been nearly a month since the photo shoot occurred, and we were told that we'd made it on a billboard. Finally, it was put up yesterday (10.10.12) at the corner of Mcglaughin and Blue Bird, in the SE Portland area.

And now we wait. Although I'm not quite sure what I'm waiting for. I don't think I'll get any criticisms or scorn from my friends or peers... I would be very surprised if I did... but I will continue to wait.

If I may quote a personal favorite of mine: "I got a poster!!!"