Whinging It

The OED welcomed this monster hybrid of a word into its fold this week.

I weep.

Happily, they are also including “turducken.”

1. Dude sunbathing at street cafe wearing only a fig leaf (thankfully in a strategic place).

2. Girl wearing beanie with cat ears while driving truck with bedazzled rear-view mirrors and giant shark fin constructed in the truck’s bed.

3. Two old guys smoking pot on the street.

Methinks it must be almost time for Burning Man.  I wish the desert-goers well.

Updates

• I presented a name slideshow to my friends, and they seemed to think it was all fun and games and not the very serious presentation it was.  And now they are more determined than ever to not let me in on the naming of their child.  The nerve.

• I sent out a follow-up letter to my old friend the Catholic church to let her know she could no longer count me among her faithful.  I haven’t heard a peep back, but I wasn’t really expecting any response.  The catharsis happened with the original letter.

• Chickens are ridiculously noisy in the mornings.  Not roosters.  Chickens.  Also, their very favorite food is shrimp shells.

Phenomenon
I volunteer as a peer counselor at a GLBT hotline.  Mostly we take calls from people who are gay or think they might be, and we help to normalize their feelings and assure them that they are normal and that this characteristic is immutable.  It’s a really fulfilling way to spend my Monday nights and I really enjoy it.

There is a fascinating trend in some of the calls, though.  About once every two weeks, I get a call from guys who “accidentally” had sex with another guy in the shower at the gym, and now are panicked because they think that made them gay.*

The way that it is described as going down (he he!) is almost unchangeable: Guy enters locker room after workout.  Other guy is in there showering.  Then there is a hazy period that is typically referred to as “and then things happened,” “one thing led to another,” or “and then the next thing I knew…”.

I’ve never asked for the specifics of how one thing led to another in these locker room trysts because I like to play out the possible scenarios in my head:

“Hey,” says Guy1.  “Is that scented soap?”
“Nah,” says Guy2.  “It’s just my natural musk.”
Bom-chicka-wah-wah

It’s all crazy interesting.

*This is a common call even outside of the gym shower sex.  A guy will have a homo-erotic experience and think that the experience makes him gay.  The peer counselors explain that experiences don’t change sexual orientation, but that gay-ness or bi-ness is determined by attraction.  I should note that I generally check to make sure the sex was consensual, and it always was.

Names are my hobby.  When I can’t sleep at night, I choose a specific sentient being (be it red-headed male human, black and white cantankerous female goat, sleepy red-eared male turtle or capricious asexual glow worm) and give it an appropriate name for every letter of the alphabet.  Part of this game is that I can’t just pick any old name for each letter.  It has to be the RIGHT name for that letter.  My female goat can’t just be Ann.  That’s preposterous.  She must be Agnes.  You see?  No?  Well at least you see that I’m insane.

One of my friends and her husband have agreed to let me name their child.  It’s entirely possible they didn’t actually agree, but they DID agree to let me present them with a PowerPoint slide show with the name I want them to choose and why they should choose it.

I just asked them to contribute names they’re considering, along with their heritages and potential middle names.  Sadly for them, this alerted them to the fact that I wasn’t kidding.

Stay tuned.

Things that Wife has done in the past year:

- Constructed a printing press using leftover wood and a bottle jack.

- Used said press to do a run of cards.

- Dismantled said press to use bottle jack for transmission replacement in truck.

- Re-finished the interior of her truck using scrap parts from the wrecking yard.

- Attempted creation of Ugg boots that I’m positive would have been successful had I not informed her that I had already purchased some for her birthday.

- Constructed portable self-watering tomato planters.

- Created own belt buckle out of truck parts.

- Made a Frosty at home.

- Made a kajillion cocktail recipes that I could enjoy while I looked on at all of these shenanigans.