It’s Mother’s Day, and so it is the day to repay your mother for all of those good-natured infinitely forwarded inspirational emails she’s sent you over the years. And – lucky for us! – there’s a website that makes it fast, convenient, and fun! It’s called momspam.net.
What’s it like for a straight dude who has a gay friend that’s in love with him? As a gay man in Texas (not a ton of homos down here), I’ve fallen in love with two straight guys. It was embarrassing, awkward and just downright weird for me. I couldn’t help myself around him. I flirted unconsciously, touched his arms and chest way more than I should have and wanted to be around him even when I was the third wheel.
I like Seattle. It offers a pretty unique and special blend of nature, weather, space, and culture. It has its downsides and things one might consider lame, but generally it’s a pretty nice place to live, and I’ve lived in a lot of places. But as a writer and editor, I often feel a sort of pressure to move out to NYC, where “everything’s happening.” Here’s why I’m a bit cautious about that prospect.
Seattle is the Emerald City, where It Rains All The Time, and where The Space Needle is, and where Kurt Cobain shot himself. Seattle is a place for Hipsters, and a place for lots of suicides (because of the rain). Every city’s got its stereotypes – here are a few for your reading pleasure.
A heavy sort of mediocrity will set in; it will be a realization that single life is just as lonely/ depressing as monogamous-relationship life; that porn isn’t real; that unfortunately, time spent dating ? time spent having awesome sex with girls with perfect bodies; that time spent dating actually = the disappointment of profile pictures, the awkwardness of hookups…
And this is TL;DR in action, sort of, and it’s also why humanity is funny. Perhaps this is why ‘discussion’ on the internet can turn into 20,000 comment-long threads full of misunderstanding, nitpicking, semantic call-outs, and accusations of not being intellectual enough. Because no one actually knows what they’re talking about, so in essence, everyone’s posturing (which is one of the most satisfying things to accuse someone of)!
Royal College of Art PhD student Julijonas Urbonas has created a design for a roller coaster that is intended to murder you… with fun! No, but you would actually die if you rode this roller coaster. It’s called The Euthanasia Coaster. Sounds quite horrifying to me, but Urbonas doesn’t think so. He actually intends for the thing (if built, which won’t happen) to lead to a meaningful death.
It’s weird that my self-consciousness is experienced anticipatorily and retroactively because I don’t feel self-conscious/ self-shamed/ embarrassed while I engage in such behavior that I later find unseemly. So in effect there’s this weird threshold of perception/ non-perception; before I cross the threshold, I am aware of myself, but once I cross the threshold, I become unaccountable to myself.
From my perspective, when you talk to your friend on your iPhone, you are only Talking On The Phone. When you eat a tofu scramble, you are Eating A Meal. When you’re having a heated discussion with a female, you are Having A Fight With Your Girlfriend. There are no specifics to these actions – instead your behavior appears as is: “Human is cleaning now,” “Human is writing now,” “Human is expressing anger now,” etc.
Earlier this week, I received an email response to an article I wrote last week called “The Thing About Hitting on Girls” from Danielle Binler, a graduate student at Columbia. I found it particularly well thought-out and illuminating, and so definitely worthy of sharing (with her permission, of course) with those involved in the original conversation. Here it is, then, for your consumption.