Charlie

Yes, but I don't even want them to know what kinds of credit cards I possess.

Is it plausible that a straight 23 year old actually has experience with all the things he says he is into?!

Requests for donations to charitable or political causes these days almost always include a credit card option. I never use it. If I can't send a check or give cash, I won't donate. When I open my wallet or checkbook, I can see exactly what I can afford to give, but with a credit card I feel pressured to be too generous. I also don't want the person requesting the donation to know what credit accounts I have.

Looks more like "boy-handled."

My favorite poster has always been Lucky. (Do I dare not to say that😬?)

"Away in a manger, no crib for his bed..."

Isn't that Al Parker?

I think it may be how Gen Z men define "bi-sexual." If they ever let a guy suck their cock, they may consider that being "bi-sexual," or just fooling around with another guy when there were no women available. For my generation, bi-sexual meant actually desiring to have sex with other men, including getting fucked and sucking. There is also less fear among the young about being identified as bi-sexual than there was years ago when one was more likely to be punished in some way for admitting to being anything other than straight. The rise in identifying as bi may be nothing more than an increase in honesty in surveys about personal behavior.

I have already made it a threesome.Anyone for a foursome?

Welcome to Palm Springs!

Forty pounds is a pretty noticeable loss. It's also possible that people who were used to you when you were heavier are now thinking, "He has gotten so thin, he must be ill..." I had a friend whose husband kept telling her she had gotten too fat, so she went on a severe diet for so long that people who knew her started whispering, "She looks so thin--I wonder if she has cancer?"

Yes, I got the mailing address from my bank statement.

I'll leave that up to you.

A seeming cascade of deaths in recent months of people I was close to--including my spouse and one of my old college roommates--caused me to reflect on the past, and I realized that every human being with whom I have ever lived under the same roof during my life--family members, partners, friends, college roommates--is now gone. It gets harder and harder to move forward as I feel dragged back to the past. I must be growing old at last. (Hmmm, perhaps I should consider finding an attractive young man as a live-in companion🤔.)

My landline phone identifies a caller, and earlier this week it identified the caller as my bank, so I answered it. A male voice--that quickly sounded AI-generated to me-- said that he was calling because he was from "American Solar" and was working with my bank to arrange free installation of solar panels on people's homes. He then asked if I were the owner of a private home. Well, if he got my number from my bank, then he would already know the answer to that question. So I suspected that the next questions would be about my bank accounts, and I immediately hung up. I googled the phone number of the caller, and though I couldn't find an exact match, every number that came up with that area code and exchange was attached to a strange foreign-sounding name (my background includes study of several languages, and I didn't recognize the origin of any of the names--they sounded made up). I found the bank's email address for reporting phishing attempts, wrote to them with all this information, and in 10 minutes I had a response from the bank thanking me for the report, which they said they would investigate.

I do wonder what this is going to do to Mahomes' career in advertising.

Yay!! Iggles win!!! And the score was so lopsided from the start that I could actually step away to do other things at times during the game, like walk the dog. I played tennis in the morning with a guy from Missouri who was a Chiefs' fan, and he beat me, so I got some vicarious revenge. Because of the timing of the game for those of us on the West Coast, I skipped the half-time show and took advantage of the opportunity to make and eat my dinner then, so I can't comment on the entertainment. I thought the ads were less interesting than usual.

I grew up in the 1950s, so I didn't know what the term "gay" meant until I discovered that it described me. To me, "coming out of the closet" was what one did when one found the piece of clothing one was looking for. My first sexual experience occurred when I was a senior in high school, with an attractive guy in his early 20s who picked me up in a public men's room where I was simply expecting to use the toilet. When he asked me after the experience, "Are you gay?" I thought it was an odd way of asking whether I was happy about what we had done together, so of course I said, "Yes!" The next day I described the whole thing to my best friend, who had never heard the term "gay" either, and I was surprised to learn that he had been having sex with an older teen on his newspaper delivery route since he was 13. From then on I thought "gay" was a secret term known only to sexually experienced older males; by the time I graduated from college, I realized that most of the experienced males with whom I had sex recognized the term. I wasn't openly "gay": I still dated girls and had a steady girlfriend in college. However, in my junior year of college, I had what was described as a "nervous breakdown" at college, so my parents sent me to see a psychologist. When he asked about my romantic relationships, I was open to him about my double life, and he said that the best thing I could do to resolve the stress caused by my double identity would be to be honest with my parents and my girl friend, so I went home and "came out" to my parents. They were surprised, but not as shocked as I had feared. My father revealed to me that his cousin Fred and the "friend" whom he had lived with for years were actually domestic partners, and were accepted as such by the family, although they never spoke openly about it except among other adult family members. When I explained to my girlfriend that my breakdown was because I was sexually attracted to males, her response was, "Is that all?!" I think she was rather naive, and we did break up. By the time I graduated from college, I understood that there was a "gay world" out there, and I could be a part of it if I wanted to. Within a year I was living in the center of a new city with a gay friend, and had an openly gay social life. I began a career in which I could be honest about who I was without flaunting it, because my employers and co-workers were sophisticated and accepting. Before long I was active in organizations that actually had the word "gay" in their titles. I never had any problem accepting that I was "gay," because it was simply a label that explained who I really was, though I was glad that when marriage between two men became legally possible, it was described as "same sex marriage" rather than "gay marriage."

You have pretty good eyesight if you can read those!

Youngsters today are much more sophisticated about the world outside their home than my generation was. For instance, I was a senior in high school before I realized that everyone in the world wasn't automatically born heterosexual. I don't imagine that any kid today isn't aware that there is a GLBTQ world out there from the time they learn their alphabet. Adults fight over whether kids should be taught anything about that reality in school, but in fact any kid who is curious about those letters can just google on his computer or phone to find out about it.

Definitely vintage! I was in the newborns ward of the hospital when it was taken.

Classic manspreading!

Personal computers weren't invented until I was middle-aged, which is why most schoolkids today can operate them better than I can. In fact, I was in the third grade the first time I saw a (black-and-white) television. I didn't have much exposure to the world outside my own small town. The only learning aids I saw were books. I learned how to type on a manual typewriter, and I didn't have one till I was in college. Schooling at all levels was very different for Gen Z than it was for me. After school activity was also different. I played games with other kids rather than games interacting with machines of any kind. There were no mobile phones to distract me. The only things I watched on TV, other than Howdy Doody, were the same programs my parents watched, and until I was a teenager, the music I listened to was the music my parents listened to. Kids lived much more in their parents' world rather than in a separate one of their own, as many of them do now. If kids worked after school, it was in menial jobs that served adults, like cutting grass or delivering newspapers. In many places, those jobs are now done by other adults who need the money. Pumping gas is done by the driver himself, if he doesn't have an electric vehicle, and many people read their newspapers online. The world in which Gen Z w grew up is different from the world in which I grew up, so it is not surprising that they see it differently than older generations do.

I have received several calls from her phone, but no messages. This afternoon I got another one, and as I suspected, it was her husband, who had her phone but couldn't figure out how it worked until now. The email from my spouse, of course, was from a not very intelligent spammer. But it does make me think that one could record his own eulogy, and use existing tech to make it available for his own funeral.

Today I received an email from my late spouse--I almost missed it because it went to my spam folder🙄!