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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I’ve never needed anything beyond the combination of the whole “I don’t do politics, or religion at work”, and a blank stare until people go away.

    And I was a nurse’s assistant, so it was a similar situation, where I was often the only male employee. I didn’t learn how to give good blank face until almost 30, though. It’s harder to do when you’re younger.

    Later on, I had to add the bits about sex/romance because, believe it or not, some women will mess with you just to cause trouble. I would add sexual matters to the politics and religion, and just walk away. There’s zero way to engage in those kinds of talks as a man in the workplace. It can not end up in a good place.

    Now, I could easily get away with the stone face because I’m typically a very friendly, polite, and affable guy. I’m even downright charming at times. So when I drew firm boundaries, it was rare for anyone to take it personally. Those that did, well, they’re not the sorts that last at any job.

    Now, if it’s break time, and we’re swapping recipes or other nice things, I was often at my most affable because as much as I actually hate people in general, and get worn out from group interactions, I can fake being an extrovert very well. That’s mostly about a lot of listening, laughing in the right places, then offering the occasional bit of conversation to let them know you’re paying attention.

    Workplace conversation should be casual at all times, no overly personal stuff, no hot button topics ever. If things are that friendly, meet up outside work and get back to the job. Not because of some bullshit protestant work ethic or capitalist bullshit, but because you agreed to do a thing for a period of time, and fucking around while the job is still on is lame.


  • Eh, it is kinda watering down the original punk, as a term for what the original punk movements represented. But that’s language. No matter what a word starts out meaning, people can use it for something else. If that new use takes off, there’s nothing that can stop it other than people as a group ceasing that usage. Isn’t that cool? See what I did there?

    Tbh though, once a word gets used a new way, and it spreads, it’s just as likely that the original usage fades away. Don’t forget that words like idiot and moron had a more clinical jargon usage originally.

    Living languages love shifting. Humans are sort of like birds with words. We collect shiny ones and play with them.

    The various _punks and _cores are just a current example of playing with words.

    As far as disliking or resisting that kind of appropriation, it can be frustrating. Anyone that was a punk back in the day would likely sneer at some of the _punk iterations, possibly calling anyone using them a fascist (and if you’ve never seen the show The Young Ones, you really should just so you can see an early version of the caricatures of what punks, hippies, and such were. Real life punks and hippies were a much more diverse and interesting thing, but less funny).

    My advice as a fellow old dude that knew some of the old school punks? Just shrug and smile. Change is inevitable, might as well just roll with it.




  • Man, it depends on how you think fucking up a chance is. Long story ahead, warning.

    So, I was raised by hippies. My dad is/was a country as fuck hippie, but still. So I had access to the library of two laissez-faire parents. This meant I was rather precocious about some things.

    Which matters a little in the story.

    My mom was a stay at home mom until I was in high school. She got a pretty shitty job, but made friends.

    This included a lady that was maybe two years older than me (and I was legal in our state), and gorgeous. I’m talking she could have been a pinup model. Curvy, with these soft, gentle blue eyes and non-bottle blonde hair that was like silk.

    Needless to say, I was rather happy to have this lady visiting often.

    It turned into her sometimes visiting when my mom wasn’t home (which started happening more since there was a rift between my parents) and hanging out with me.

    Now, I was not the suave and sophisticated motherfucker I am today, but I did have some game. And I was not an idiot about everything. So as the flirting escalated on both sides, we were both quite aware that it was going to end in something spectacular. I didn’t know if it would be just sex, or something more intense, but we were two trains heading towards each other with no brakes.

    Annnd, it didn’t happen.

    My mom fucking cock blocked me. No bullshit, she decided to make her friend swear to not date or have sex with me. Since this woman was a good sort, she promised and kept her word. But, since she was a good sort, she told me the truth when she called a stop to things.

    Words were had with my mom lol. Which, I’m not getting into her reasoning beyond saying that it was not a reason I consider a good one even more than thirty years later after being a parent myself. That’s a whole different story.

    Anyway. Years pass, and there’s always this fire between me and this lady. It’s a small town, so we would run into each other regularly when I’d come into town to visit (I had moved to a nearby city for a while). But it never happens.

    And then I moved back home. Moved into the family home in specific. Which is another long story, but not relevant here.

    So, my mom was in the process of moving out at that time, and dragged that process out for two years lol. But her friend would still visit, and that fire started burning harder and higher.

    There was a kiss on my birthday. I was asleep, and she came to wish me well. I had been sleeping. And I saw her angel face when I woke up, and damn. I just pulled her into me and our lips melted into each other. Other than my wife and when we finally met in person, it is the best kiss I had ever been involved in. Fucking choirs were singing hallelujah.

    But she had made a promise. That my mom refused to let go of.

    So, some more time passes, my mom moves out, and I’m in the process of buying the family home (another long and boring story). I get a call. It’s her, calling from a bar saying she’s had too much to drink and be able to drive. So I go get her.

    She doesn’t want to go to her home, for good reasons. So I bring her to ours. She says ahe wants to get drunk, and would I take care of her while she did. I’m Mr fucking sober buddy (for real, I’m known for it), so I agree.

    There’s flirting, there’s some serious conversation about the situation, but there’s mostly just us playing cribbage and bullshitting. Why? Because cribbage was what she wanted to play. No idea why, she couldn’t give one.

    She gets to the level of drunk that I would have cut her off for safety’s sake. She passes out on the couch, I get her into a safe position, and set an alarm in the next room to check on her in a half hour. I figured if she was fine then, I could sleep and she’d be fine.

    Well, she was fine, and I turned in. Only to be waken up as she’s climbing into bed with me. She’s mumbling something, and kinda pushes her bottom against me before passing back out.

    Now, I can not state clearly enough how good she felt next to me. Soft, warm, and even under the bourbon, she smelled divine. Just her personal scent, no perfumes. Maybe a hint of her soap. She was in her underwear. My body reacted. It reacted strongly.

    But, even though I have never been perfect, one thing I have never done is take advantage of someone like that. Never have, never will. So I put a pillow between us, cuddled up, and went to sleep.

    She was gone when I woke up.

    We lost contact. Or, more truthfully, she wouldn’t return calls, and this was before cell phones, so there wasn’t the same immediacy of knowing that someone is deciding not to answer as there is now. She could have been busy and not at home. But after a bit, I gave up and figured that something had happened where she didn’t want contact, and left it at that.

    Except. Small town.

    We ran into each other maybe a year later. A little awkward, but I just waved and smiled, and left it at that. No pressure, that’s another thing I’ve never liked doing.

    But she calls a few days later, wants to talk.

    She tells me that she’s sorry. Not for ghosting me (that wasn’t a common term then, I didn’t even hear it for years after that), but for being so horrible that I didn’t want to have sex with her that night!

    She had gotten tipsy with the intention of losing enough control to not care about her promise. Once she got home with me, and I’m being Mr fucking sober buddy, she thought I was not into her, so she got more drunk to make a move herself.

    And, here’s the kicker. When she climbed into bed with me, she wanted me to have sex with her. That was the entire goal of the evening, and she genuinely thought it was a good idea that she get so drunk that she wouldn’t feel bad for it happening. Then, when I didn’t rape her in her sleep (which is what it would have been, in my mind then, and still is now), she thought I was too disgusted by her drinking to want her at all.

    The lady did have some issues, obviously.

    I reassured her that I had wanted her from the first time we met, and it had never changed. But I was a little upset, and asked her if she really thought I was the kind of person that would do that to someone. And she said “that’s just how men are”.

    Which says it all, doesn’t it? Kinda encapsulates the kind of life some people suffer through, to be left with that as something that they not just accept as part of an ugly world, but think it’s normal and that it’s okay. She really was hurt that I didn’t want to have sex with her while she was unconscious.

    It was a long conversation after that. But she was with someone, and as much as I cared about her, and still wanted her, I was fine with that being the end of it. I still can’t wrap my head around the dissonance of her thinking I could do that. Like I said at the beginning of this, I was precocious. So I was not shy about discussion sex casually, and had talked about sexual issues with her. Drunk sex had come up in conversation. I had said I wouldn’t be comfortable with it since it just felt skeevy. So it wasn’t like the matter was new to the both of us.

    Hell, I had even clearly stated in one conversation back when I was still in high school that my biggest turn on is being wanted. Not just in a casual sense, but being actively desired. There’s a magic in it for a big, hairy dude, and I was big and hairy even then. Not many of my peers were into dating a damn sasquatch, you dig?

    So, I don’t know that I fucked up the chance. I kinda think she did. But I guess it counts.


  • Eh, grills are kinda meh, imo. They do protect from impact, but that’s not as likely as you’d think. But dust and debris? Grills are useless. You need something that will prevent things like that from getting on the speakers and causing deterioration over time.

    Unless you’re including screens and meshes in grilles, and some folks do.

    But yeah, it’s cheaper, and people like to see the speakers, so it helps sales. No bullshit, I’ve lost track of how many people have been weirded out that my car system is covered by a screen. They think you have to see the speakers or they’re somehow fake or made of cheap materials. Like, motherfucker, I built that damn box for one thing. But car speakers are exposed to sun and heat and even worse dust. Not having a screen over them is silly.

    .