Notices by allan (allan@mastodon.club), page 13

@kai I would probably go into full on withdrawal.

But I wonder if maybe I would get more stuff done, like hobby projects and the like? Maybe the reason I don't, now, is because I don't have to fill long periods of boredom.

@kai I wonder what it's like to live there, nowadays.

One would almost have to swear off technology entirely since it seems like everything has some sort of radio in it (wifi, bluetooth, etc.)

I'm reading about fine particulate matter and what it does to one's lungs and I suddenly never want to breathe again.

Also just _so_many_ old time diseases were the result of chronic exposure to fine particulates of one kind or another.

@kai so you're saying we need to deploy a strategy of divide and conquer...

@kai there's one for each day of the week, perfect.

@kai 😉

I like how this house is done up for pride week

@kai now I must be really aggressively super gay for the rest of the week just out of spite.

@keithzg it's just a Second Cup. I grabbed a coffee on my way home and some guy in line decided to unload on me, because? I was around??

This is the weird flip-side of pride. It's the one time of the year when homophobes feel the need to over-compensate and pointedly tell all the gay people they see that they don't belong and don't deserve to be happy.

In a way it is a nice reminder that, while we may pretend otherwise the rest of the year, the bigots are still here.

I managed to go almost the whole weekend without any open displays of homophobia. It's like a new record for the start of pride. Usually it's bright and early Saturday morning.

Apparently that the cafe by me has a small rainbow flag and acknowledges pride week is an egregious burden that oppresses all the straight people. So that's cool.

And apparently instead of being gay I just need the loving embrace of Jesus but no not in _that_ way, that's sacrilegious.

This is, of course, a joke. Oglaf is delightful and you should all read it for it's crude sex jokes.

This is probably the best short summary I've seen on the selling of indulgences as it is usually described during any European history class, as a prelude to the reformation and the catholic reformation. https://www.oglaf.com/cyril-pardoner/ (NSFW)

@opendork there's probably some irony in me saying that as I've basically been drunk non stop for the past two days, because pride, and my body is super unhappy with me right now 🤢

@opendork I think _even_if_ homophobia wasn't real anymore there would still be value in having queer centric spaces. There's value in queer identity and culture and I don't think it can survive without queer spaces.

I really wish there was something other than the bar scene. Like a nice gay tea shop or something. But I also think the queer community has a collective drinking problem and that the only place we can gather is a bar isn't helping.

It is also possible that I'm just being an old man yelling at clouds.

When I complain about the bar scene (mostly that the only gay pubs closed) people point out that grindr et al exist. So it could be just that the world has moved on and I have not moved with it.

Similarly I don't use Facebook, which is how the universe plans events now, so I could just be shatteringly out of the loop on pride related activities outside the party scene.

I don't think so, but maybe?

It's a strange thing to reflect on but in the past decade it's gotten dramatically better to be gay -- I don't generally feel like anyone's going to murder me when I leave the bar anymore -- but also it's much less visible? There really isn't a gay ghetto any more. We're just dispersed into the crowd.

It's very assimilationist? I dunno.

I was talking about this a while ago with some straight people, on the occasion of their first trip to a gay bar. I casually mentioned that Edmonton used to have half a dozen queer bars of various flavours and now there's just the one. Gentrification has largely swept away a lot of historically queer businesses and left in its wake just general inclusion?

Then the parade was moved it from the historically gay downtown west side to the more tourist-centric Whyte ave...