Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Skip to one minute in. Did you see it the way I see it, even though I'm not sure what it is I'm seeing? Maybe it's me. Maybe it's something in there, shining.

Anyhoo,

One day I'll speak.

Drifted by a conversation, heard the content, didn't stay long.

How does one react to [over]hearing someone declare that gay people looking after children "is not right", that "freedom's gone too far" and that "if they tried that anywhere else they'd be shot".

Someone countered that it was better that children were looked after than not. The main proponent argued that even if the gay people don't harm the children, putting children with them would be harmful because the children would be bullied, society would reject them, so it ought not be allowed.

I left at this point, when it was obvious that no one was going to challenge this.

I oughtn't have done. I should have stayed, and argued, and pointed out that continuing to maintain such a caustic, vindictive society is directly harmful to children—to any that discover themselves to be gay, or to any that are perceived to be—and so in his, well, I would say status-quo model, except it's not really the status-quo, not as it has been for a long time, not as it really has been since pretty much forever, because, well, life always provides the exceptional, that this model harms three sets of children; the gay, the thought to be, and the missing out on a better life.

I ought to have pointed out that in saying that gay people are not to be trusted with children, for whatever reason, he is declaring one part of humanity to be lesser mortals, untermenschen, and that such a trope really hasn't worked out well in the past.

It's self-perpetuating. All are equal, but saying some are more equal than others, and those that are less equal are only so to save them and their kin from the ills of society, means that society is confirmed in its ills. The salvation is condemnation.

Besides which did you never get to that thing about the sins of the father? Oh, sorry, yours is later edition; less New Testament, more Deuteronomy.

But then what did I expect but inept solipsism from someone who uttered the phrase "no disrespect". It's "with the greatest respect" for those who don't even know they don't mean it. It's a "no homo" flag, a signal of cravenness. It's "not being racist, but..."

But then I think people who use the phrase "I'm not being funny" usually are—frequently both senses—although often don't care to know it.

Anyhoo,

Did you wear it to that funny thing? That what do you call it? I want to call it that registry office contract, a civil contract. They can call it a wedding—they think it's a wedding—but it's not.

She chose not hear me querying her use of "funny thing".

And in other news, I've just noticed that the Yes to AV letter gives my address as:
Forename Surname
Top
## Residential Road
London

Anyhoo,

Um...

So it turns out I've got quite good at posting infrequently, and by posting I mean writing two thirds of a past then just leaving it as a draft. Permission to have a sort of amnesty? Except I don't know who I'm asking permission from as I long ago gave up looking at the stats for this site (when one has stats for work sites and spin-off not-work sites but which actually lead to income [of a sort; think of a deep contraction of my real name and bung that in Google along with a colour and liquid trapping a gas], well, seeing I've had a visitor from Guyana who came here after Googling "cow parsley prawns" or some such pretty much undergoes desire-wanage. No one intentionally comes now so there's no point paying attention to whether anyone does or even preparing content in case someone should; may as well turn the whole colour-scheme grey, install a raccoon and claim there are gardens somewhere out there under it all).

But on the off-chance, look out for things appearing in the archive.

Anyhoo,

One problem with the whole lapsed anonymity thing is that is it absurdly hard to find anywhere to vent. Here only suffices because I think it's been forgotten about.

For my father's birthday I gave him a t-shirt. This led to my parents viewing the site on which my designs are sold. Nothing disastrous so far. Then my mother rings and while talking about a whole load of other things happens to mention that one of the designs is wrong, as 'gay' should be in capitals, because otherwise it means "en fête". This from a woman who days earlier was mocking the BSE effect of the Daily Mail on some acquaintances (it makes them bovine and makes their brains rot).

Presumably my father's birthday is not the time to reduce his wife to tears over the phone.

Whenever I think it's fine there's always something I'm told I need to change about me, about something I do or have done. I would say it's as regular as clockwork, except it's not at all, and that's half the pain of it. It's like the game; suddenly it exists again and you just lost.

So how does one gently suggest to a parent that one might like to nudge one's spelling out of the seventeenth century, which after ALL was the laſt TIME that anyone ſane uſed ERRONEOUS capitaliſation?

Unless of course we're back to that backronym/club.

Which I think we are.

Oh JOY.

Why must killing these canards be so canard?

Bonus point to the person who can find the source of that joke.

Anyhoo,