Inside the Blogging Studio with Bourgeois Nerd

Oh, I know -- You all were expecting another post about the problems I see in patriarch's world Arizona. I do have plenty to say about the most recent law banning ethnic studies. Still, sometimes one needs a little escapism. This is why I jumped at the chance to have a chat with my ol' blogging buddy Bourgeois Nerd. Join us for the first part of our chat here today, and over at his place tomorrow for Part II.

***

Bourgeois Nerd (BN): Ever since GayProf and Historiann’s terrific blog conversation, I knew I wanted to do something similar. The only problem is I’m not an academic, so there were no historiographic or pedagogical issues we could really discuss. So what I was thinking was we’d talk about being gay nerd bloggers and how that influences our perspectives and content. Or something. It’s a bit meta, perhaps even navel-gazing, but I think it will work. I guess we’ll see.

I guess we’ll go with a slightly cliché question to break the ice: what brought you to blogging? Mine was just peer pressure, basically. I started reading a lot of blogs over a winter break in college, everyone was doing it, so I thought “Hey, why not!”

GayProf (GP): My blog actually started from a convergence of really bad scenes and drama. At the time (so long ago, now!) my eight year relationship with My Liar Ex (Who Told Many Lies) was coming to an end. Oddly, it was he who suggested that I do a blog. Maybe he wanted to distract me from all the lies he kept telling. On this I cannot say.

BN: I’ve always wanted to meet Liar Ex (Who Told Many Lies) just so I could pop him one on your behalf.



GP: Eh – He’s not really worth it. As it turns out, I am so much better off without him around. Funny how not living with a total loser makes your life easier and more fun. Life lesson learned. To misquote the immortal Tina Turner, "If you wanna love a man like me, it takes a man to do it."

In addition to the relationship nastiness, I was stuck in a miserable small town in the middle of TexAss and surrounded by remarkably hostile colleagues in my work life. The small gay community that was there felt really depressing because they were so under siege.

So, I guess you could say that my blog started out of desperation. I mean, you could say that, but it would make me feel bad about myself.

At the time, the blogosphere felt a bit smaller than it is now. Even though I didn’t anticipate it as a result, it turned out to be a really great way to connect with people.

BN: Totally. The stereotype of the pajama-clad blogger with no friends is so not true; blogging really is a great way to meet people and create communities. I’ve met people I wouldn’t have otherwise in a million years, from the big brother I never had to porn stars to you, My Strong Amazon Sister.

When did you first realize you were a nerd? As I said just the other day on my blog, I think I burst from the womb a nerd; it’s in my blood.

GP: Wait – you think that I am a nerd?!



Just because a person reads all the time, rarely exposes his skin to sunlight, hasn’t watched a television show produced after 1979, and is most widely associated with a campy comic book character, does that make him a nerd?

Oh . . . I guess it does. Damn! This I know for sure: I’d much rather be in a room surrounded by gay nerds than in a room with hetero “cool” people.

BN: To be in a room surrounded by gay nerds would be total bliss for me. (And a sexual fantasy, but we won’t go into that; this is a family blog conversation.)

GP: Maybe your blog is for families, but my blog ain’t for children.

BN: What do you think it means to be a gay nerd? It’s sort of being a double outsider; do you think it gives us a different perspective?



GP: For me, being a nerd isn’t about limits. It’s about being empowered to claim things – Like the authority to decide whether Matt Smith is brilliant or rubbish as the Doctor!

BN: Nerds get to unabashedly love something (sometimes too well), even if it’s not the socially-sanctioned subjects that people are allowed to be passionate about. Hardcore sports fans are as insane as any Star Trek conventioneer or guy who dresses up like Sonic the Hedgehog, but it’s “manly” so it’s okay.

GP: Though, to be fair, hardcore sports fans baffle me. I could see why they might not quite understand the pointed-ears thing (And, yes, I have attended a Star Trek convention in my lifetime.).

BN: Oh, they baffle me, too, but they’re “acceptable” in a way the people who speak Klingon aren’t.

You know, I’ve never been to a convention! It’s totally unbelievable, but true. I really want to go to at least one someday.

GP: I had a generally good time at the convention. It was around when I was 12 or 13 and Nichelle Nichols was the speaker. My father dropped me off at the convention center at 10 am and then returned around 6 or 7 pm. Today, he would probably be arrested for child abandonment.



But if your sexual fantasy is to be in a room surrounded by gay nerds, maybe you might want to look into the Trek conventions? I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

BN: A real nerd is interesting because they’ve put time and thought into at least one non-mainstream activity or product. Anyone can talk about the weather, but not everyone can argue convincingly about warp core design.

Also, Matt Smith: brilliant as the Doctor. It’s heresy, I know, but, at least at the end, I kinda couldn’t stand David Tennant and Ten. The smug pomposity made me gag. (To add to the heresy: I think Chris Eccleston is much hotter than Tennant, especially with the leather jacket. I also think he was the better Doctor and actor.) I think Matt Smith and Eleven will be just the right kind of unabashedly goofy to clear the air after two very angsty Doctors. And Amy Pond is just amazing. I’m predicting she’ll be my favoritest Companion ever.

GP: Sacrilege! Only Martha Jones can hold the title of favoritest companion!



BN: Poor Martha. That’s always how I think of her: “Poor Martha.” She got a really raw deal as a Companion.

GP: Martha was the only companion who felt like a solid peer to the doctor. Donna, though, was a nice change in that she wasn’t always fawning.

Matt Smith strikes me as more pompous than David Tennant. Smith seems to be doing okay so far, but I can’t say that I adore him. He often looks out of his acting depth – Kinda like he is a teenage boy who borrowed his father’s suit to play a business man in the high school play.


BN: Do you think a gay nerd is really any different from being a straight nerd, other than appreciating all the men in spandex, or do we have some unique perspective?

GP: Being queer gives us a unique perspective on everything else, so of course I think we are different caste of nerd. I’ve heard different theories about the attraction of some gay men to nerdom. For me, nerdom provided an absolute escape from a pretty grim adolescence.

BN: I totally hear you about “escape.” It was definitely that for me. This sounds so pathetic, probably because it is, but there was a large stretch of my life where books and Star Trek were my only friends. Even now, it’s a nice way to escape from quotidian reality.

Do you think your blog helps you at all in your academic work? I know some academic bloggers, such as The Little Professor, use blog posts to “think out loud” about issues they’re working on professionally.

GP: Well, given how indiscreetly I critiqued some of my evil TexAss colleagues, I’m lucky it didn't end my career as an academic!



The way that it has helped my career is much the same as most people report about blogging: It provided a much wider circle of people that I know. I wouldn’t say that the writing has done much for me (except occasionally distract me from NERPoD). Instead, I tended to use the blog to write about things that I wouldn’t have been able to write about in my academic career.

What I like about the blog is that I can have a bit more of a sense of humor. It might surprise you, but academics aren’t well known for being a barrel of laughs. Even when we are writing about really serious issues, I think that you can still poke fun. Like, for instance, noting that Arizona recently changed its advertising campaign to be “The Grand Klan State.” It’s a little clunky, but it apparently tested better than “Got Whiteness?”

BN: I still can’t believe that law passed. Tell me you’re going to do a post on that, as only you can?



GP: I did my best before hand.

BN: You sure did. But now they’re getting rid of any teacher with an accent, and, in a direct attack on you, outlawing ethnic studies! What is going on?!?

GP: The governor just signed the law outlawing ethnic studies courses. That state is becoming a leader of asshattery.

BN: You post less, but generally longer-form, and usually have a long comment thread. I tend to post more, but generally shorter-form, and rarely have many, if any comments. This isn’t a criticism of my wonderful, fabulous readers whom I love very much (it isn’t), or to say your (wonderful, fabulous) readers are better, but I do find it interesting.

GP: My posting less isn’t really by design. After five years, the ol’ creative tank might be nearing empty. It would be nice to think of it as a genius campaign to build momentum for the blog. In my fantasies, scores of people are huddled around their laptops waiting for the day that a new post emerges on CoG. In reality, though, the blogosphere has a shorter attention span than Bart Simpson. Any day, I expect the blogging version of Heidi Klum to send an e-mail telling me that I’m “out.” I wonder who that would be – Joe. My. God?

BN: I definitely know what you mean about the creative tank running low. I find my creativity and posting frequency is very, very cyclical. I also have an advantage in that I often just throw up a link to someone else’s work and say “Hey, this is cool!” and call it a post, plus I at least have my “Skimpy Sunday” feature where I just throw up some pretty men. You actually sit and think and write, which is a lot harder and time-consuming.



Do you think the vast improvement in your life has something to do with your dwindling blog output? If blogging was therapy for you, then the dissipation of your issues has made “therapy” less vital.

GP: Maybe. . . Definitely the early years of the blog were partly about working out what felt like a serious trauma. It probably felt that way, because it was. You’re right that my life is so much better now and I don’t need to “vent”.

Mostly, though, I think the slow down in blogging is that my current life has also left me absurdly busy. I’m lucky if I have time to read my favorite blogs, much less write something. Big Midwestern University kids itself if it thinks that having a dual appointment is anything other than double the work of a regular appointment. They then wonder why they lose so many faculty to other universities.

But I also do have fewer creative ideas than I once did. Somewhere around the second or third year, I put a lot of thought into ways to make the blog grow or change. Maybe my creative energies are going elsewhere (like NERPoD: The Sequel) these days.

BN: I once wrote creatively a lot: poetry, short stories, etc. My ambition was to write the Great American Fantasy Novel. But my period of greatest creativity was when I was in high school suffering from major depression; as I’ve grown older and generally happier, the urge and ability to write has pretty much evaporated.

Joe. My. God. and Andy Towle would be my guess for blogging Heidi Klum, BTW, though actually I think RuPaul would be more appropriate. “The time has come for you to blog post FOR YOUR LIFE!” (Have you watched RuPaul’s Drag Race? You really should. This season isn’t as good as last season, though.)

GP: I do like RuPaul’s Drag Race. This season was not quite as good as the first. It disappoints me, too, that the show has tended to subtly discriminate against contestants with an accent. In the first season, Nina Flowers was not given the crown because (according to RuPaul) she had “language issues.” Likewise, I felt like Jessica Wilde was eliminated once she was unable to shill Absolut Vodka in a Midwestern accent.



BN: The second season of RPDR was definitely inferior. The talent level was, overall, lower, and the bitching was just over the top. There’s a difference between being bitchy and being a bitch, and too many went too far over that line this time around.

GP: But to get back to the topic at hand – which I am pretty sure was me -- I write posts that are often quite lengthy. Maybe this is the type of thing that Little Professor refers to as “thinking out loud.” There is some issue that has me thinking (draconian immigration laws; imbalanced school curriculum; whether Jill Munroe could take Pepper Anderson in a cage match) and I am trying out an argument about it.

***


Read Part II tomorrow where Bourgeois Nerd and GayProf discuss secret blog identities, social phobias, and gay marriage. Plus, GayProf will show you how to get coffee rings out of your antique furniture!

Dating

Dating is complicated. I don’t mean “complicated” in the same sense that figuring out how to keep a skyscraper from falling over is complicated. I mean "complicated" in a way that doesn’t involve long equations or the potential for mass carnage. It’s complicated in a way that’s confusing. Every single person I know seems like they are in a constant state of uncertainty.

In the gay world, there seems to be three dominant modes of “dating/hooking up.” The first are those who are in a search/quest/life-mission for a long term relationship (LTR). They look at every date/encounter as the potential start of a thirty-year partnership. As a subcategory, there are those who want that LTR to be entirely exclusive. They won’t shy away from bringing up the question of monogamy on the first date – sometimes before the soup even arrives at the table.

The next group are those who seek the entirely opposite. Only random encounters inform their desires. He might spend the evening at your place reenacting that special scene from his favorite Falcon video (the one that involves a serious investment in lube and (hopefully) yoga stretches before hand). Yet, he considers shaking hands the next morning “just too much pressure for a relationship.”

The last group is the ever-favorite fuck-buddy (FB) relationship. Who doesn’t like a friend who is willing to lend a helping hand? As a Boston friend of mine points out, the winters are mighty long in the north. The cold nights pass much more comfortable with a friend providing warmth.

Still, the FB doesn’t appear as easy to pull off (no pun intended) as it seems. It has generally turned out, in my limited experience, that somebody ultimately thought of the sex as more than just a way to pass the time despite their claims otherwise. It’s all fun and games until you discover your FB rummaging through your garbage in the middle of the night with a flashlight and an auger. I am sure that many, many other people master the FB relationship without such trauma. I am quite jealous of them.

This is not to say that I think any of these three (or more) models for dating is better than the others. I really think that people want different things from sex/love/ companionship. Some imagine that every stranger is a potential partner for a ready-made relationship . Others want to make out with strangers in a pool of Redi-Whip. It’s all about choices and knowing what you really want. Then you have to find the person(s) who share that same outlook and be honest with them.

My problem, though, is two-fold. First, I am not entirely certain what I want at this particular moment. This, by itself, should be an immediate red-flag to anybody who wants more than to be my FB. While I generally think I want another LTR at some point in my life, I have noticed that when a viable option for one appears (like recently), I retreat. Sure, there have been occasional exceptions – Usually those have involved remarkably poor decision making on my part. Overall, though, I have become down-right queasy when somebody I am seeing starts pushing for a LTR (and they often start pushing right away).

This brings me to the second problem, which is my concern for those who pursue a LTR without much introspection. I understand fully those who pursue the casual encounter. Indeed, some of my most enjoyable memories of a “romantic” bent over the past couple of years have been short-term. I also understand (at least in theory) those who want to be a FB. Those who push for a LTR, however, often make me leery. This is not because I think LTR’s are bad or doomed to failure per se (although. . .). I do think, however, that the desire for a LTR often appears as a default without much consideration about why the person is pursuing it.

In many ways, our society puts tremendous pressure on everybody to be in a LTR. To be sure, it’s even worse for heteros whose entire worth is currently linked to their LTR status and desire/ability to have children (but that is another entry entirely). Gays at least know that other options are out there beyond the LTR. Despite that knowledge, the overall pressure for a LTR often permeates everything. This results, I think, in many people seeking a LTR without really considering if a) that is actually the mode of relationship that works best for them or b) that a person who is willing to get naked with them is not really signaling that they are on the same-page romantically.

Many men that I encounter see the world only as a dichotomy. Like Heidi Klum, they say that you either "in [a relationship] or you are out." They want to instantly jump to “boyfriends” with the understanding that we would be working on becoming a “Mr. & Mr.” (Or, in my case, “Mr. and Dr.”, thank you very much)). Why, I wonder, can’t there just be simple dating? Sort of a grey area between the FB and the LTR?

For right now, I want a relationship that has affection, but is not crushingly serious. Something that involves plenty of naked time, but doesn’t require that we spend every waking moment together. I want to date without the topic of a LTR even being on the table. You know, something where we have fun together, but that doesn’t involve a lot of heavy questions about “the future.”

You know, nothing turns me off more than a guy who asks too many of those “relationship” questions. Things like, “Where is this heading?” Or, “What’s your name?”

Probably my personal hesitancy about a LTR involves both my past and future. In the first year after the end of my eight-year relationship, I really wasn’t into the notion of another LTR. Indeed, I think it would have been a remarkably dumb individual who would jump instantly into another LTR after all of that time with one person. Now that more time has passed (almost two years!), that seems less immediate. Still, I am quite leery about making the same mistakes (and concerned that I have already repeated them, though on a smaller scale, with some people).

More important than my past, however, is that I am not imagining any element of my future. Right now, I have only a single goal: to finish the never ending research project of doom. Will I still have this job? Will I move? Will I find true love? Will I die my hair? Will I buy milk tomorrow? None of these questions matter to me. All that concerns me is finishing that research project. What happens after that point, I can’t (and won’t) think about right now. Romantic relationships certainly involve too much effort of projecting myself into the future.

When I have explained this (as I have always been committed to honesty), it has often been received as a challenge to convince me of the need for a LTR. This, by the way, is always a bad strategy. Never presume to know better than the person you are dating, especially if that person is GayProf. When this occurs, I suddenly become the reincarnation of Greta Garbo and "want to be alone."

The other problem with those who push instantly for a LTR is that I most often think that we don't really know each other. There is a big danger that they learn just enough about me that they think I am great for them. While I generally agree that I am the cutest thing in shoe leather, I am concerned that they fill in all the gaps in their knowledge with what they want to be true. It's easier than the months of work to actually figure somebody out.

Of course, there are more than just these three crude outlines of what gay men are looking to find in “dating.” There are thousands and thousands of other ways that people organize their personal lives. These include, but are not limited to, triads, open LTR’s, serial monogamy, etc., etc. By far, though, the majority of single gay men out in the dating world probably identify their interests with one of those first three. Of those three, Midwestern Funky Town is dominated by those seeking a LTR (preferably with an individual who enjoys camping).

What does that mean for me? I am not sure. As I said, dating is complicated.

Deal Breakers

Recently Kusala mentioned a New York Times article entitled "It's Not You, It's Your Apartment." It focused on apartments that ended romantic relationships. Before reading the piece, I expected that it would chart horror stories of unclean bathrooms or Star-Wars sheet sets.

Instead, I was surprised that many of the complaints focused on possessions that the apartment guest found tacky. One guy apparently broke up with his girlfriend because she had Klimt’s The Kiss hanging on her wall. I grant that the image has been overused. You know if you are going to go rummaging through a poster bin, at some point you are gong to find The Kiss. Nor have I ever been a fan – Being a big homo, that image never really spoke to me.

But to break up with somebody over it? Really? That was all that it took, huh? Couldn’t you have just waited until you were deeper in the relationship and, oh, I don’t know, mentioned that you didn’t like it? Unless she had a matching tattoo on her left breast, it hardly seems like your eyes would need to spend much time looking at it all.

It got me to think what would be the things in some guy’s apartment that would send me packing? I could think of the obvious discoveries that would prompt me to run out the door: part of a human torso in the fridge; a collection of Nazi memorabilia; children. Maybe I just have lowered expectations. Really, though, I don’t think that clichéd art is my cut off.

Maybe I would have some questions if a guy that I dug had the Farrah Fawcett poster on his wall – Unless he put it up with irony. 'Cuz if he had it up with irony, I would probably marry him.



Then I got to thinking about the things in my own apartment that might be deal breakers. Taking a look around, I realized that there are many potential relationship killers in my apartment:

My apartment lacks any interior walls (except for the bathroom and closet).

I have an insane number of dishes and stemware. Right now I have two sets of dishes in my cabinet and enough stemware to open a bar. Seriously, I have a dish problem. I would say I am a dish-queen, but that makes it sound like I want to gossip.

My apartment has an unusual number of accent pillows.

I enjoy drinking coffee out of a cup and saucer.


My DVR currently has 4 episodes of the Daily Show, 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica (which I have already watched, but might want to see again), and 15 episodes of Star Trek: Voyager.

To keep me company while watching Voyager, I have all the action figures.

My NRFB Mego Wonder Woman doll.



The current contents of my refrigerator: mayonnaise, tortillas, a tube of Pillsbury cookie dough, two oranges, a bag of apples that are older than some child actors, TaB, and two hotdogs.

My freezer has frozen chicken, pizza, and three different types of vodka. Really I just keep the chicken and pizza in there so people won't think that I am a total alcoholic. Those interventions take up too much of my time. It's also awkward to fix yourself a cocktail in the middle of one.

My cabinet currently has a can of Pam cooking spray, Ramen noodles, olive oil, bran cereal, rice, and a package of pink marshmallow peeps.

The only television that I own has a smaller screen than my computer.

I have an annoying burning bush in the corner of my apartment that keeps nagging me to lead my people to freedom. I should probably repot that or something.

Books are strewn across the room, all open to somewhere in the middle.

As I live in an attic apartment, my ceiling slopes, making it impossible to install a sling.

This is my new favorite shirt for the gym:



Instead of pens, I have crayons.

My two well-oiled gladiator servants who do my every bidding.

A chess set, though I can’t remember the last time I played.

I hated doing dishes so much that I made sure I had a dishwasher, but I don’t currently own a microwave.

I keep a New Mexico flag on my desk.

Then there are my Star-Wars sheet sets. . .

Perhaps my current lack of a long-term boyfriend isn’t all that mysterious after all.

Alone?

My least favorite holiday is upon us: Valentine’s Day. Since I was a young child, this day has just never gone my way. When I was in school, we had to exchange Valentine’s Day cards. It was a court-order or Congressional edict or something. In third grade, my fellow students made fun of my Valentine’s day cards because of my poor handwriting and spelling skills (Which, in truth, were really quite poor). It made me cry. Since that day, my experiences on February 14 have basically gone downhill.

High School was even worse. Student organizations sold carnations as a scam oblique measure of popularity fund raiser. Basically, you paid $1 to send a red carnation to somebody you lusted after liked romantically or a white carnation to “just a friend.” Oh, I got lots of white carnations from the many girls around me. Did I ever get the red carnation from Mario Pacheco that I longed for? No. Stupid Valentine’s Day and secret-unfulfilled-high-school crushes from before I even came out of the closet.

Apparently I am not alone in my bad feelings towards V-Day, either. According to many polls, a simple majority of people are in favor of eliminating Valentine’s Day altogether. What other holiday has that? Some people might not like the commercialism in Christmas, but you will never get 51 percent to say that they don’t want all those presents. When was the last time you heard somebody suggest not celebrating New Year’s? “No, man,” they would say, “I liked 2006 too much. Let’s just keep that clock from rolling over. Tonight we’re gonna party like this night is not fundamentally different from any other night.”

Yet, more people dislike or are indifferent to Valentine’s Day than want to celebrate it. Are we all such slaves to commercialism that we just won’t let it go?

Today (February 13), I saw an ad for an on-line dating service that said “Alone? It’s not too late to find that special someone for Valentine’s Day.” Hey – That sounds like a healthy relationship in the making. Nothing like two people being made to feel like losers so that they will desperately cling to each other. Why not follow up this advertising genius with other ads that will result in equally dysfunctional relationships. How about: “Low Self Esteem? He’s not too married for you to start your own relationship with him.” Or, “Emotionally Stunted? Somebody just like your mother is out there – Find them on-line now.”

The reason people don’t like Valentine’s Day is that it never turns out like it’s supposed to turn out. If you are in a relationship(s), the pressure is simply too high. Everything feels contrived and artificial. If you aren’t in a relationship, a pink and white army emerges to tell you that you suck at every turn.

Well, screw all that. Being single on Valentine's Day won't prompt me to open a bottle of wine and drink alone. Nope - No wine for GayProf, cuz wine can't compare with vodka.

In the meantime, I have created a list of activities that are distinctly anti-Valentine’s Day:

Contemplate the necessary economic conditions that would result in Hallmark’s financial collapse.

Compose an essay outlining how Valentine’s Day is a hetero-sexist institution that enforces gender and sexual conformity. Print and distribute it on pink paper as an ironic statement.

Listen to the commentary on That Girl DVD’s. Wonder how Marlo Thomas can have only the sketchiest memory of the show’s plot-lines, development, or fellow actors, but can remember every single outfit that she wore and where she acquired it.



Marvel at the time it takes to mend a heart once it breaks.

Bake some cookies.

Get baked.

Undermine heterosexual marriages simply by existing. It’s what we queer folk do – as a people.

Consider what it means (if anything) that the fictional character that you have most related to in the past few years is the suicidal gay Proust scholar in Little Miss Sunshine. Well, that character and Helen Mirren’s Queen. Yeah, it’s a real mystery why I don’t have a date tonight. **Sigh.**



While thinking about Little Miss Sunshine, debate via text-message with a sassy friend whether the film is a repudiation of Nietzsche’s philosophies in favor of Proust or if the film seeks to reconcile these two figures (Actually, I already had this conversation via txt-msg. I am not sure that I have an answer. After all, I am no suicidal gay Proust/Nietzche scholar. Let me tell you, though, it takes forever to spell out Thus Spoke Zarathustra when you only have a standard 12-button pad on your cell phone. -– What?)

Get laid.

Wonder if getting a Pharaoh hound would be worth the hassle of their in-bred genetic problems simply so that you could have a dog that looked like the Egyptian god Anubis.





Plot revenge on all of those snot-nosed third-grade bastards. Be sure that it involves a Carrie-like finale where you use your strange mental powers to make them pay.

Develop strange mental powers

Send hate mail to the pope – again.

Convince yourself that writing an anti-Valentine's Day screed does not at all mean that you are bitter.

Watch gay porn.

Make gay porn.

Ponder if drinking liquor after eating a container of yogurt kills the L. Acidophilus and B. Bifidus cultures, thus negating the benefits of eating the yogurt in the first place.


Submit a proposal to Logo Network for you to star in the all-gay-male remake of Charlie’s Angels.



Consider turning your blog into one long and continuous personal ad.

Stage a production of the Vagina Monologues.

Watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch and savor the bitterness.

Refuse to be impressed by any Democratic presidential candidate who “just can’t support gay marriage because of their religious beliefs.”

Finally, my annual favorite: Crush up Xanax into a bowl of ice cream and go to bed early.