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Same here. My first thought was, "Busy Boy!"

To Coriolis, I saw your post, which now seems to be deleted, and I looked into the possibility you raised. However, it didn't apply. The change in Edge seems to be a legitimate upgrade to the program. Also, and to my embarrassment, my reaction, including initiation of this thread, must now be consigned to a cause best described as "someone moved my food dish." Being an old dog, this is almost always a problem for me. I have noticed that, on occasion, an image posted in the Gallery cannot be saved unless it is left-clicked so that the image opens in a smaller version which can then be copied. When the smaller version is closed, you are returned to view the larger version. Most images are not like this, but the one I picked was. In the previous version of Edge, an attempt to Save the larger image was simply ignored, clueing you into the need to left click. In the new Edge version, you are given the option to Save the image as a WEBP in any one of three options. If you do this, you only magnify your problems. The appropriate action is to left-click as before, then Save the smaller version (JPEG) as before. Those images not formatted in the forum in the way necessitating the left-click are Saved in the same manner as before. To add to my chagrin, I had worked on the "problem" for 40 minutes before posting my plea for help. And to FrankR, I agree Edge is cantankerous concoction, but having made my adjustments and concessions to it, I can hobble along better with it, I think, than with another "newfangled" nuisance. This will save me from another of my Dorothy Parker imitations of "What fresh hell is this?" But I do thank you for your response. To others who may read here, feel free to chuckle at my folly, and accept my apology as you return to a lower level of drama and hysterics. Bonne nuit.

I recently underwent an unsolicited upgrade to Microsoft Edge. In the gallery forum, I can no longer save an image as a jpeg, even though that's the image's format. Please tell me (a) I'm not the only one afflicted with this, (b) somebody here knows how to fix this, © they will share that fix, and (d) all the people at Microsoft have died their well-deserved deaths. And, yes, I'm working on my anger issues. But this didn't help.

I followed the link to the Supreme Court site and read the opinion in this decision. In the first paragraph, I read, "An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids." (my emphasis) Then, I cried. Just a little. And then a little more when I thought of why I'd cried. Sometimes, the Court gets it wrong. The long-ago decision in Dred Scott, wherein the Court essentially held one man can legally own another, was one of the wrong ones. Today the Court got it right. At last. These things usually take a while to happen. Brown v. Board of Education (school desegregation) took a while. Lawrence v. Texas (sodomy statutes) took a while. And God knows that today's decision took a while. The wall of freedom is built of single bricks. Today that wall got stronger. Today humankind took a step forward. Today history was made. And I cried a little in celebration of this day, and that it came in my lifetime. Grab a Kleenex and join the party! [i know this thread touches on politics and maybe should be in that forum. But this -for us- is more about life and liberty and history. And maybe it deserves a larger stage in this forum.]

What do you plant to grow that kind of tree? I would love to pick its low hanging fruit!

I'd happily serve as his ballboy.

At some point I fell in love with Kurt Thomas but, sadly, he never knew it. I did see him once when he appeared in Louisville as part of a touring gymnastics exhibition. I even got his autograph on a program. He was adorable: cute face, captivating smile, great hair, amazing muscles - a real boy-next-door type. He never knew how happy he could have been had things worked out differently that night. That this man should die so young after a life of athletics and what I would presume were good health practices is a tragedy that seems so awfully unfair. As unfair, perhaps, as being denied his chance to win Olympic Gold when Jimmy Carter decided to pull the USA team from the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. How awfully tragically unfair! Rest in Peace, Dearest Kurt. I hope it was a good and full life.

Just out of curiosity, what sort of office do you work in?

I once read a medical journal article about the ill effects to your health of drinking alcohol, and which went thorough all the horrible diseases and conditions it causes or contributes to. It made me sweat a bit and caused much fear and apprehension. I decided right then and there to give up reading.

Like many men, I harbor a desire to have two women at the same time; one to cook, one to clean.

You know what would make this sex even better? If I had something to read.

A man told a friend he'd been fired for asking a customer "Smoking or non-smoking?" He then added, "Apparently in that industry the correct terminology is, "Burial or cremation?"

A penguin’s having trouble with his car and drives it into town so the walrus who owns the local garage can take a look at it. The walrus says he’s a little backed up that day but will get to it as soon he can. “It’ll probably be about an hour,” he tells the penguin. It’s a hot day and the penguin decides to walk over to the diner for some ice cream; he loves vanilla ice cream! Having flippers instead of hands, the penguin makes a mess of the ice cream, getting it all over his face and dripping down the front of him. After about an hour, the penguin’s headed back to the garage. The walrus, having now checked out the car, sees the penguin approaching and calls out, “Well, it looks like you blew a seal.” Looking down and wiping away, the penguin protests, “No, no! It’s – it’s just a little ice cream.”

One advantage of growing as old as I have is that younger men are more plentiful. Willing? Aha, there's the rub!

An almost Channing-esque quality to him, which I absolutely love. Hope he's real, but does seem an odd time to enter the marketplace.

The great Greek statesman Pericles was speaking with his nephew, a young man named Alcibiades and who would later become a great Athenian general and lover of both men and boys. Pericles told his nephew, "When I was your age, Alcibiades, I thought and spoke just as you do now." Alcibiades replied, "My Dear Uncle Pericles, if only I'd know you when you were at your best."

At a time in my life -from 35 or so on to early 60s- I dreaded birthdays and saw them as reminders of declining function and an unavoidable mortality. Those aspects of function and mortality haven't changed, but my view of them, and of my future, have changed. Because of a long history of smoking, I remember thinking when I turned 60 that I wouldn't get out of that decade alive; I would be dead before 70. But I wasn't. A heart attack at 62 got me to finally quit smoking and I haven't had a cigarette since the day after my doctor told me of the attack. I feel to be living now on gifted time, each day the opportunity to enjoy being alive, seeing friends, and having a drink or four. The current pandemic has, of course, put a brake on that, but I have hope of better times to come and am taking precautions to preserve myself for them. The object of life, it now seems to me, is to die with a smile on your face, and I'm intent on doing as much as I can to make that happen, however hopefully long it takes.

I think the "generational thing" aspect is a quite accurate observation. Those of us of a certain generation, as well as the ones before it, quickly became aware of the need for discretion in our choice of watering holes, the most common of venues to find like-minded others. One of the best friends a gay man could have in those days was Bob Damron and his guide books listing all the gay places in cities all across the country, and in some editions, the world. These listings even provided info as to the type of establishment, such as "drag shows" or "RT" (rough trade, sometimes also called "downtown types"). These categories also include my personal favorites of "Hustlers" and "Go-Go boys." I suppose in a way gay bars became a little like churches of different denominations. True believers don't just walk into any building with a cross on top, but need to know that others inside will be of a persuasion like unto their own, will be birds of the same feather. Going into what you knew to be a gay bar, and even sometimes into one of a particular fetish, such as "leather" or "drag shows," allowed you feel you'd be more readily and naturally accepted by "your own kind," that you'd be with members of your same tribe. It promoted a sense of acceptance, comfort, and security. That young gays are comfortable in mainstream bars, and accepted by their non-gay friends and fellow patrons, is welcomed evidence of a greater acceptance of gay people by the general populace, a thing to be celebrated and encouraged. For me, however, I miss the clarity of former times, if not the bigotry of a world waiting outside.

I began to come of age in my early 20s, in the era of Vietnam and the San Francisco Summer of Love, Hippies, and Haight-Ashbury. I remember thinking ahead then to being 30 years old and asking myself, "Who the hell would want to live that long?" I now realize that we humans are, apart from viruses, perhaps the most adaptable species on the planet, including our ability to adapt to our personal circumstance. The perspective of age now informs me that another year always looks good, so long as pain, if there, is minimal and well tolerated. There are always old joys to enjoy and newer pursuits awaiting to captivate us. Life lies not in longevity, but in the living of it. Enjoy what you can of it, and remember what the Buddha has given us: "In the end only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you."

Before I actually retired, I told people I already had enough money to last me for the rest of my life. As long as I died by Friday. Thankfully, it's worked out a little better than that.

Thinking of the recent closings of both Secrets and the DC Eagle, the loss of two storied bits of Gay history in Washington, has made me reminisce a bit about other places once loved and now lost, passed from our lives and living now only in fond and treasured memories. My first favorite bar in the city was Lost and Found, address at 56 L Street SE, in the same building later occupied by Wet and its beautiful dancing boys. I had only lately left the Navy and settled in the DC area. I had been to L&F a couple of times while in the Service and when I traveled up from Norfolk, and had never seen anything like it. After leaving the Navy, I was fortunate to have spent the night of July 4, 1976 (the Bicentennial) in that place, filled with flashing lights, lots of red, white & blue, and many happy and handsome men. There was a bartender at L&F, the spitting image of porn god Gordon Grant, tall and dark, with chiseled features and muscled arms featuring prominent biceps. Arriving early on one occasion, I sat with several young men at “Gordon’s” bar as they helped to roll up the sleeves of Gordon’s already short-sleeved shirt. One very cute and clever young man, jealous of not getting a turn, asked Gordon, “Can I roll your sleeves down?” I think I snorted some beer. But I didn’t spend the whole night at L&F. Earlier I had been on the rooftop of a Gay movie house, also on L Street, just down in the next block from L&F, and called The Follies, predecessor to the later O Street location. This was another stop on my pilgrimages up from Norfolk, and offered gay porn movies and a dark room for more intimate encounters. On this special occasion, we traveled to the rooftop for soda and chips, to watch the Bicentennial fireworks show. We watched for an hour or more, and I remember getting a slightly sore neck, but this time not from looking up while on my knees. At one point, a whole block of Gay establishments operated along O Street SE, starting with Ziegfeld’s and Secrets at the corner of Half Street, then moving to the Glory Hole, a bookstore with peep shows and other benefits. Next was The Follies, relocated from L Street, and finally, at the South Capitol Street end of the block, La Cage aux Follies, another bar with naked dancing men and showing big – smiles. And now, all these are gone and it seems we will not see their like again. The world has changed, and the city with it, but, for my tastes, not for the better. I miss these places, and others, too, yet visit them often, in a playground filled with reminisces of happier times. Sorry if all this seems something of a downer, but passed on places, like passed on people, live on in our minds and memories, and can still warm our hearts. At least, they do mine. Please add your lost and loved locales as you are moved to do so.

Is there a way this gentleman may be contacted to schedule the laying of some pipe?

A Palestinian Arabic Cuban, located in Dubai, India, and NYC, seemingly all at the same time? Guy must move around faster than Superman and that speeding bullet. Should make for a short, and wholly regrettable, session. I'll have the soup.

Sadly, been there … or close to it. Not a "finest hour" moment.

In a town down South, where eccentricity may be viewed as a charming oddity, if not actually embraced, there lived an old woman, probably in her eighties. She was slight of build, with gray and curly hair, and wandered around wearing scuffs on her feet and an old-style housecoat with nothing underneath. She would stroll some days through her neighborhood and “entertain” those she encountered by lifting and holding up her housecoat and exclaiming “Superpussy!” On such days, one victim after another was exposed to her show and shown her “Superpussy!” Old and younger, singly and in pairs, people were treated to her “Superpussy!” show. One day the woman came upon an old man being pushed in his wheelchair by a caregiver. The old man, somewhat thin and frail, was bald on top and wore thick, wire-framed glasses. The woman, true to her style, approached and stood before the man, lifting her housecoat and exclaiming “Superpussy!” The old man leaned forward in his chair, pursed his lips and squinted his eyes as he made a lengthy examination. When done, he relaxed back into his wheelchair and told the caregiver, “I’ll take the soup.”