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May 04, 2005
Differences
I've smoked my last gauloises, so I'm back to american spirits for the time being. They're really only superficially different -- I'll die smoking either.
Let's begin with an example.
I think that a liberal attitude toward politics, limp wrists, a taste for quiche and iced coffee drinks with whipped cream served with little phallic representations reproduced in chocolate, linking me from his blog, and regular anal intercourse -- oh, I'm sorry, let me dumb that down for you -- taking it in the pooper on a daily basis, make you a homosexual.
My dear friend does not.
You may argue that I'm making a generalisation with that statement, and that not all eaters of quiche are that way inclined.
You may suggest that homosexual acts, in and of themselves, do not a flamer make. That in order to truly be labeled gay, the individual in question would have to have enjoyed such undertakings. Well, I operate the camera, and believe me, he likes it.
I've lost my place here. Let's go back to the part about him being gay.
This is a fundamental difference, as is, I suppose, your potentially disagreeable attitude toward mine.
Fear not, asinine reader. I'll allow you to retract your statements and accept my opinion as gospel, as I'm clearly correct.
It's these differences that affect our general attitude toward any endeavour we may choose to pursue, and indeed, the way we choose to live our lives.
If you may indulge me another example, and another generalisation: Consider the way life is led on opposite sides of the Atlantic ocean. Europe and America, if you will.
From the west comes turn-over based fast food restaurants, factory assembly lines, gay military analysts, and a fast paced lifestyle in which, to borrow an old phrase, life is spent attaining wealth, and wealth spent attaining youth.
From the east comes a single six-hour dinner time sitting, hand-made goods, and midday breaks in the workday -- plently of time to smell the roses, as it were.
It's these differences that make people what they are, be they striving for a goal to which a time limit is placed, or enjoying the journey for what it is and to its end. Differences which, while never really agreed upon, can be understood if time is taken to do so, and fully realised as benign.
When labeled and misunderstood, differences in living often cause conflict, and it is in the conflict that journeys are cut prematurely short, and goals left unmet.
And I think that this is what our softly worn measurer of alcohol with a predeliction toward iced coffee drinks with whipped cream served with little phallic representations reproduced in chocolate perhaps doesn't like so much.
Maybe I can agree with that.
As to the other stuff...
Posted by j at May 4, 2005 01:39 AM