Author: Aaron Weber

Plan, eh?

I was kinda hoping that Straight Plan for the Queer Man would turn out to be well-dressed straight men helping gay slobs dress like sophisticated adults. But no, it’s about teaching femme boys to act all tough and slovenly.

Hate to surprise anyone here, but most gay men, and in fact most straight men who are in any way different from the masculine ideal represented in the show (stubbly, barbequing, workbooted, messy-homed, sweatshirt-loving) know how to do this. It’s called “surviving high school.”

I’m always amazed at the way that discourse in this country is dumbed down. People don’t understand the difference between sex and gender, and they don’t understand the difference between sociocultural affiliation and race. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is fun because you get to see people make snarky comments about men with poor grooming habits, and then at the end they get lots of pretty things and you get to imagine how your life would be if you had ten grand to blow on a new living room set and a year’s worth of back waxing. The gayness isn’t really the appeal– it’s the word people attach to the appeal, I guess. But “What Not to Wear” started the whole thing, and they’re not explicitly gay.

A special hello to my readers in Provo– apparently you’re almost 10% of my traffic this month.

Quickies

Best Week Ever is a weekly (haha, get it?) show on VH1 that covers the week’s pop-culture ephemeral non-news. And it has a blog. Lurvely waste of time.

Tech support work is often described as hellish. It’s not all as bad as this guy describes it, of course. If you’re one of the premium customers, you get premium support, and that means real answers and real time spent helping you. At least, a little. Not like we’re going to kill ourselves for you or anything, as some particular customers seem to think (you know who you are, mister– calling the support manager at home does NOT endear you to the other two members of the support team.)

In the grand tradition of What Badgers Eat comes Badger Badger Badger, a flash-heavy song about badgers, mushrooms, and snakes. But mostly badgers.

Declension

So, in Vegas this weekend, will I see Elvis? How many people dressed like Elvis will I see? What’s the plural of Elvis? A lot of people use “Elvii” but according to Bookdwarf and Straight Dope that would be assuming a spelling of Elvus. That’s the same as thinking the plural of penis is penii.

The -is ending is usually for third declension nouns, which are pluralized to -ites, so if we wanted to go the Latin route, really, we’d have Elvites. Of course, Elvis isn’t actually a Latin word, so the real plural is just Elvises, same as pelvises and penises.

The next question, then, is how many people are going to find this site looking for pornography and find ridiculous grammar instead? And is it going to be (shudder) Elvis porn? Possibly featuring the aliens who abducted him? I hope not.

Cute

His & Hers sheets. But what if I sleep on the other side of the bed? Anyway, this is somehow related to everything else: they’re ideal wedding-registry items, and come in boy-boy and girl-girl varieties as well, so this sort of fits in with the same-sex marriage is good for the economy, especially since they’re so fucking expensive.

Coloration

The problem with choosing a color is that of course it’s not websafe. I’m not concerned with my readers, of course– it’s legible and even if it weren’t it’s not like I’m really writing for anyone but me me me.

No, it’s that on my monitor at home, and on my monitor at work, they don’t look the same, and I keep changing my mind anyway, and I end up futzing with them on Friday nights instead of going out.

Well, Solo Boxeo is on Univision now, so I’m gonna make some canned soup and watch violent sports while my girlfriend’s out sipping wine with her lady friends. I was supposed to be at a party but I can’t get the energy together to get off the fucking couch.

“I wake up feeling fragile; it’s nothing the TV couldn’t cure, or lying here for my whole life.”

Fucking Carthage. I feel like I’ve been pillaged. We’ll salt their fields yet.