The Homosexual Lifestyle

[arthwollipot]

Designer fricken jelly beans. What flavor can't you find?

Alas. Earwax.

 

[shemp]

And this concerns you?

I take a bath (well, a dip in the creek) every Saturday night (during the warm months).

 

[sarge]

I am a gay woman, let me tell you about my Homosexual Lifestyle™:

7:00 AM: wake up, we have a nice cat and a mean cat. *nuzzle nuzzle nuzzle* has different meanings. If its the nice cat, it means she's made of matter and takes up space; if its the mean cat, he's hungry. Mean Cat is practically schizophrenic, he nuzzles while wagging his tail aggressively. Good morning Mean Cat, let me get you some food.

7:05 AM: breakfast time. Do I want a bowl of cerea--ack why am I cringing? Oh, thats right, I ate cereal everyday for the first 20 years of my life, I *hate* cereal. Bagels and hummus, carb-ilicious!

7:20 AM: get dressed for work. I have like 10 belts and 15 pairs of shoes. I have exactly one favorite belt, and one pair of shoes that doesn't kill my feet. By the way, what is it with high-heeled shoes? They're like the intersection of everything that makes shoes uncomfortable, unsafe, and impractical, they're like the height of cruel jokes. That and my feet are too fat.

7:35 AM: hair, makeup. I spent the last 5 years growing out my waist length hair, and to this day I can't braid my own hair. And never really learned to do makeup beyond foundation and concealer. Tried to do eye makeup once, inadvertently discovered the cusp that separates hideous and hilarious.

7:55 AM: if I leave at exactly 7:55, I can make it to work by 8:40. If I leave at 7:56 AM, I generally arrive at 9:05.

9:00 AM: I'm a software developer, I make rich white men I've never seen or met become even richer and (optionally) whiter.

9:05-11:30 AM: I've been writing code for a long time. I'm going to be honest here, I do like my job, but really its boring and often times mentally unstimulating. I usually tell people I "code on auto-pilot", going through the motions and rhythms to get the job done and occasional fire-fighting. Bleh.

12:00-1:00 PM: om nom nom nom nom!

1:00 PM-4:30PM: oh snap, spent the whole day screwing around. Work work work work work.

4:30 PM: I like to leave around this time when I have nothing more to do for the day. If I leave by 4:35, I can usually make it home by 5:05 PM. If I leave at 4:36, home by 5:45.

At this point I should mention I haven't listened to mainstream radio in 3 or 4 years, I'd never even heard of Lady Gaga until she started to show up the US news a year or so again. I keep some CDs in my car, haven't made any new CDs and have listened to then 100s of times. Lately I've been driving in total silence.

6:00 PM: Nice cat nuzzling, following me around, jumping on me within 2 seconds of sitting down. Indeed, she still is made made of matter and taking up space.

6:05 PM: you know, you'd think sitting at a computer all day would make me sick of computers for the rest of the day. I spend the next 5 hours proving you wrong. Internet addiction.

Speaking of which, just yesterday, I walked into a Best Buy to get some printer ink. You might have picked up by now I'm a bit of a computer geek... so, when I walk in those places, I'm like rawwwwr must buy. I like talking to the sales guys and the geeksquad guys, because they know squat about hardware and software. They memorize scripts about computers, but I can't tell you how many dear-in-headlights looks I've got when I mention something even barely outside their script, like HTML5 or C# or being able to VPN to work. Ok so long story short, I walked out with a laptop and no printer ink.

I could never handle myself at Fry's Electronics, total nerdgasm.

When I'm not blowing money on electronics, sometimes I go over to my parents place for dinner.

9:00 PM: at this point, my night is pretty much over. Interwebbing until bedtime.

Sometimes I get invited to bars. Mostly, I just tag along with my sister and her friends, we throw darts.

Back in June, I walked in the Omaha Pride Parade. I picked out a super cute outfit (piccie, caution: may be awesome). That night, I got invited to a concert, which was held in a sand volleyball court behind a bar. Hells yeahs I wanna go to a bar/concert, I'm already dressed for it.

The concert was was fun, not a large crowd of people but everyone was having a good time. At around midnight, friend who invited me commented to me that he needed another beer, but he has no money. I tell him "oh don't worry, tell me what you want, I'll take care of it." "Oh thank you, can you get me a Coors Light Tan".

I walk in the bar, and its packed. No particular reason why, there was a concert outside and no one seemed to care. There are only two bartenders, both busy, I'm huddled next to the bar, not really sure how to get their attention because I don't drink. I'm there for about 20 seconds, and this older guy comes up behind me, very muscular, neatly trimmed mustache, he says to me "oh hi there", "hey, how are you", "good, and you?", "good!". And then he says it, "so can I get you a drink?", I say "sure, can I get a Coors Light Tan?" I thank him, return to the concert, give free beer to my friend, and enjoy myself for the rest of the night.

(And if you're wondering, no, I don't drink. Beer is gross. There's like a worldwide conspiracy to convince people that its actually "good" and that being drunk is "fun". I'm convinced the same people behind this are the same ones propagandizing the utility of criminally uncomfortable high heels.)

11:00 PM: bed time. Mean Cat nuzzling again, this time more pissed off and angry than ever. Come on, let's get some food. A-hole cat. Nice Cat spends the larger part of the night pawing and kneeding me right in the most painful part of the neck, she likes to be right *on* me. 14lbs of cat right on your chest, not enough to seriously impair breathing but plenty adequate to make it ridiculously uncomfortable.

------

Oh and, errrmmm, sometimes I date women. Sweet Jesus!

Freak. Pervert. Normal people do not like cats (and the whole beerophobia thing is suspect as well).

 

[I Ratant]

"Das", "der", and "die".
Three genders in German.
Where totally inanimate objects have gender.

 

[RatBoy]

Not buying it.

Nary a word about Rosie, Chaz, or where she gets her flannel shirts laundered.

And what of these lesbian showers and baths y'all keep teasing me with... 3 1/2 pages and nada, zip, zilch!

 

[Dessi]

"Das", "der", and "die".
Three genders in German.
Where totally inanimate objects have gender.

I personally found this article on how language shapes thinking fascinating:

In recent years, various experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them. In the 1990s, for example, psychologists compared associations between speakers of German and Spanish. There are many inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed. A German bridge is feminine (die Brücke), for instance, but el puente is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for clocks, apartments, forks, newspapers, pockets, shoulders, stamps, tickets, violins, the sun, the world and love. On the other hand, an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish, and so are chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and garbage. When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed.

In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. [...]

English speakers — stuck in their monochrome desert of “its” — are entirely oblivious to. Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany? Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned? At the current state of our knowledge about the brain, this is not something that can be easily measured in a psychology lab. But it would be surprising if they didn’t.

 

[Toke]

Ok, I am having vine tonight.
But still, the lesbian approach to beer offend me.
Coop just had stout at 89Kr for 4 six packs and I have stocked up.

 

[Didaktylos]

Dessi - the thing about beer is that it is an acquired taste and if you haven't acquired it by roughly 21 you probably never will; since you also have an antipathy for drinking alcohol just to get drunk, it's even more unlikely. In my case, I didn't really develop the taste for beer until right at the end of my first year at University.

 

[Pardalis]

Dessi - the thing about beer is that it is an acquired taste and if you haven't acquired it by roughly 21 you probably never will; since you also have an antipathy for drinking alcohol just to get drunk, it's even more unlikely. In my case, I didn't really develop the taste for beer until right at the end of my first year at University.

Vinegar is also an "acquired" taste.

I guess gasoline is an "acquired" taste too. I'm sure if you drink a cup everyday you'll eventually come to like it. Why does one need to force himself to something they dislike?

It's a taste some people just don't want to acquire. I totally understand Dessi's distaste for alcohol, and I'm not even gay!

 

[I Ratant]

I personally found this article on how language shapes thinking fascinating:

.
In my 3 years in Germany, I slandered/slaughtered their language.
English construction for phrases just doesn't communicate all that well!!!
And ignoring genders didn't help.

 

[RandFan]

I guess gasoline is an "acquired" taste too. I'm sure if you drink a cup everyday you'll eventually come to like it.

Tastes I acquired. Vegetables (I love them). Classical music. Poetry. Jazz. Non-fiction. Books without pictures. Art museums. Books stores. History. Lot's of different foods. Rye bread, brie, liver, etc. Various alcoholic beverages.

Why does one need to force himself to something they dislike?

I'm not sure if I would characterize it as "forced". The first time I tried many things I did not like them. Often it took awhile of trying them and then one day I found I did not want to be without them. I'm not sure why that would be bad. Come to think of it, when I was a child I thought the idea of french kissing was positively gross. I guess for some of us it's an acquired taste.

 

[ZirconBlue]

By the way, what is it with high-heeled shoes? They're like the intersection of everything that makes shoes uncomfortable, unsafe, and impractical, they're like the height of cruel jokes.

<snip>

I'm convinced the same people behind this are the same ones propagandizing the utility of criminally uncomfortable high heels.

Oh, you lesbians and your sensible shoes!

That's the thing: being gay is really one of the less interesting things about me, and most people don't know until tell them... or tape a "mi eros virinojn" sign to a helicopter and fly it in their face.

Why must lesbians always shove their virinojns in our faces?!

My mother-in-law's husband actual uses the term "homosexual lifestyle". He blames the "homosexual lifestyle" for the reason my wife and I don't visit more often (it's because they bring guns to the dinner table and live too far away).

If they bring guns to the dinner table, I'd say they live too close!

Vinegar is also an "acquired" taste.

I love vinegar.

 

[Newtons Bit]

"Das", "der", and "die".
Three genders in German.
Where totally inanimate objects have gender.

Sort of. They refer to young girls, "das madchen", with the neuter gender. Sometimes it doesn't make any sense whatsoever...

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I personally found this article on how language shapes thinking fascinating:

If you find Whorf's “Science and Linguistics” interesting (as I do), you might also be interested in Korzybski's General_semantics^WP. Neither as I understand things have a huge degree of scientific acceptance and GS is considered somewhat cultish but Korzybski's musings have definitely affected the way I think about thinking.

Disclaimer -- I have never actually read anything by Korzybski; most of my knowledge I have I got from reading The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase.

 

[RandFan]

If you find Whorf's “Science and Linguistics” interesting (as I do), you might also be interested in Korzybski's General_semantics^WP. Neither as I understand things have a huge degree of scientific acceptance and GS is considered somewhat cultish but Korzybski's musings have definitely affected the way I think about thinking.

Disclaimer -- I have never actually read anything by Korzybski; most of my knowledge I have I got from reading The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase.

I love linguistics. I recommend Pinker's Language the Stuff of thought, Everett's Don't Sleep There Are Snakes and Deacon's Symbolic Species.

 

[Dessi]

Nary a word about Rosie, Chaz, or where she gets her flannel shirts laundered.

You'll get a kick out of this: What's a lesbian look like?

A friend of mine told me I'd pass as straight, if it weren't for the fact that I "walk like a lesbian". I don't even know what that means. If it I had it my way, I'd look more like Portia de Rossi

Oh and speaking of transgender people, isn't Harisu the most impossibly beautiful woman you've ever seen?

 

[RandFan]

You'll get a kick out of this: What's a lesbian look like?

A friend of mine told me I'd pass as straight, if it weren't for the fact that "walk like a lesbian". I don't even know what that means. If it I had it my way, I'd look more like Portia de Rossi

Oh and speaking of transgender people, isn't Harisu the most impossibly beautiful woman you've ever seen?

Agreed.

 

[Pardalis]

I'm not sure if I would characterize it as "forced". The first time I tried many things I did not like them. Often it took awhile of trying them and then one day I found I did not want to be without them. I'm not sure why that would be bad. Come to think of it, when I was a child I thought the idea of french kissing was positively gross. I guess for some of us it's an acquired taste.

In Didaktylos's example he had to endure the taste for at least a whole year. I would call that forcing oneself.

I'm not that perseverant. I'm just not going to drink something that is foul just because other people do it. After the third time I wanted to puke so I stopped. I didn't try again because I didn't expect another outcome.

I love vinegar.

But you don't drink it by the bottle.

 

[I Ratant]

I love the tattooed lady in "Desnuda en Barcelona"....
Absolutely fabulous!

 

[RandFan]

I'm not that perseverant. I'm just not going to drink something that is foul just because other people do it.

I understand, I'm just trying to explain how a person can acquire the taste for something. I like the effects of alcohol and when I first started drinking it was the only choice. Eventually I came to love it and will gladly drink non-alcoholic beer just for the taste. As difficult as it is to understand it does happen.

Have you ever acquired a taste for something like vegetables? Perhaps one day you hated them and then later disliked them and eventually came to like them?

After the third time I wanted to puke I stopped. I didn't try again and expected another outcome.

There are things that I found so foul I've never tried them again. Perhaps your response was that strong.