Jump to content
gdf

Life

Recommended Posts

It needs to be hammered home to everyone dude. I've been inappropriately touched, though substantially less egregiously, by both women and men in relatively normal pubs. As far as I know gay women experience the highest rates of spousal abuse, followed by gay men, and it's totally overlooked because of social expectations concerning the gender of victims and perpetrators. 

 

To illustrate, more or less every guy is aware of the "no touching" rule in strip clubs. It is actually quite a well obeyed principle, but when men break it they are generally making a conscious choice to be terrible and break a norm designed to protect workers. There are often (though still not often enough i.e. 100%) appropriate sanctions for this behaviour. They're just fucking bad dudes. Ask any male stripper, though, and they'll tell you that being sexually assaulted is a daily part of the job, and something that they can't really do anything about. Their customers just don't understand that what they're doing is a violation of boundaries. A similar dynamic was illustrated in Broad City when Abbi kept fucking Seth Rogen's character after he passed out. She didn't even realise she'd assaulted him until Ilana told her. I think they dealt with it pretty well, in a kind of comedy as consciousness raising way. (See also Girls season five, when Hanna tries to suck Ray off in the coffee truck despite his protestations and nobody batted an eyelid. That wasn't handled nearly as well.)

 

Really complex issues like this are where I feel the intersectional framework fails badly, because it's extremely reductive and can actually help reinforce old gendered expectations. This leads to the misdiagnosis of problems, or well meaning victims questioning themselves.

 

namman what happened to you was sexual assault, it fucking sucks and I'm sorry to hear it happened. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey. I'm relatively quiet on the forums here, but I do read some semi-regularly. I notice the topic of keeping in touch with uni friends was on discussion recently. It felt related to some recent happenings, so...

I'm still in uni. Throughout, I've built up groups of people I'd talk to every day, some of them much less pleasant than others, and ultimately I've lost touch with a number of them already. But recently the guy I was closest to for the last few years has been getting more and more distant, and it's felt weirdly deliberate/personal/whatever at times. It's an odd experience feeling like something's changed when nothing visibly has. Sometimes it's fine, and then others it's been really not and he's made some really barbed comments. Inconsistency is just puzzling. But it felt as though it culminated the other night when I really needed somebody to talk to and he blanked me completely.

Ouch.

Combined with other people just being outright confusing... I dunno. People. Needed to write this I guess. So hi, and thanks for tolerating my rant.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

bcmn, that sucks - I know the feeling of drifting from friends for sure. Not easy to deal with! Are you in the Bay Area?

 

I'm a long time thumbs listener living in Oakland. Does anyone else in the forum live in the Bay Area? I'd love to do an area meetup. I love Idle Thumbs, its brand of smart humor and earnest discussion. Would like to make some other gamer friends in the area - seems like its hard to meet anyone who is into games here since it's such a hiking/camping/outdoors crowd! Plus I don't work in tech...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am not! North-East Scotland here. Hope you find some more Bay Area folks though, sounds like a fun idea. I'm sure I've seen a fair few readers from that area through Twitter, etc. so it seems like it should be possible.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Fit like loon? Fellow sheep here.

 

Sorry to hear that, it's nae fine. Sometimes friendships just end for no discernible reason. I feel like I've probably been the boy on the other side of that scenario to some of my oldest pals from school, but that's definitely a geography thing since I left Aberdeen a couple of years ago. 

 

Have you asked him why he's being weird?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ahaha oh dear, you might start losing me when it comes to Scots slang unfortunately.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I saw people talking on the Slack about having semi-regular meetups in the Bay Area around the time of GDC, but I don't know that anything every came of it. It seemed like there was an interest, so look around a bit and see what people would be into.

 

In weird things I do for work news, I had an off the cuff conversation with one of the higher ups about how I think regulations around parental consent are preventing meaningful research into adolescent populations who are at risk for HIV last week (followed up, of course, with my obnoxious habit to forward higher ups research papers that back up my point of view), so now I've been voluntold to join in a point/counter-point debate about IRBs and regulations for the med school. Looking over the list of participants, I'm not sure I really belong -- doctors, regulatory specialists, people who work in public health designing studies, and... me, a hospital administrator? It's a weird bunch for me to be associated with, and I hope I can hold my own and not just make a fool of myself up there.

 

I guess I should be happy that my work not only lets me but actively encourages me to mix my activism with my job, but I'm just super nervous about the whole thing. I'm far from a specialist, and most of the experience I have is from working with HIV positive youth a few years ago in Atlanta and the frustration around trying to get help for them from any of the usual public health resources. I guess I've kept up with meta-analyses of the state of HIV research, but not really intensively. Here's hoping that's enough!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

bcmn, that sucks - I know the feeling of drifting from friends for sure. Not easy to deal with! Are you in the Bay Area?

 

I'm a long time thumbs listener living in Oakland. Does anyone else in the forum live in the Bay Area? I'd love to do an area meetup. I love Idle Thumbs, its brand of smart humor and earnest discussion. Would like to make some other gamer friends in the area - seems like its hard to meet anyone who is into games here since it's such a hiking/camping/outdoors crowd! Plus I don't work in tech...

 

Perhaps check out the Idle Map - https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9871-where-in-the-world-idle-thumbs-map/

 

There are more SF residents than showing, and actually some really rad folks in Davis CA that had done some meet-ups in the past.  Necro that thread and meet fun folks

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Woohoo! I just got a longboard and took my first ride and it was awesome! I had the idea today while working and found a cool store that let me borrow one of their demo boards -- the Loaded Dervish. Basically if I take the train home, the best place to ride longboards in town goes from the train station to my house. So I wonder why I didn't have this idea before!?

 

Since I haven't done any sports for more than a year, I'm pretty badly out of shape, and the first ten minutes of trying to ride was excruciatingly painful for my soles. However, I sat down for 5 minutes after that and got through the pain and the rest was almost pure delight! Felt a bit dangerous though, so I might get a helmet and gloves.

 

I'm also now feeling it a bit in my knees so I wonder if as a pretty fat guy at the moment, maybe this isn't actually healthy for me...??? I'll try to ask a doctor tomorrow, but if it should be fine, then I'll definitely be buying one, and will try to make riding it part of my everyday commute!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Do any of you have advice for driving across the US?

 

I am currently in North Carolina and got a job in Southern California!  I am figuring out what to pack in my car, then I'm either going to spend 5+ days driving alone or shipping it all and flying.

 

Have any of you done this before?  Are there good places to stop?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We moved from OK to CA and here's what we did. We loaded up the car with suitcases, packed all of our belongings into a U-pack. They drove our furniture and shit for us. If you're doing the move alone, I would fly. If you have a partner in the road trip experience, I would highly recommend it, especially if you have a car you need to move anyway.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Do you have a friend who can drive with you and fly back? Buying a one way ticket for him/her would still be cheaper than paying someone else to take your stuff.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Mike, are you asking for advice on whether to drive, or what cool places to stop off at if you do drive, or both?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Do any of you have advice for driving across the US?

 

I am currently in North Carolina and got a job in Southern California!  I am figuring out what to pack in my car, then I'm either going to spend 5+ days driving alone or shipping it all and flying.

 

Have any of you done this before?  Are there good places to stop?

 

Mike, in August of last year, I got in a car and drive, by myself from NH to AZ, where I moved for my new job. I've read that Mark Twain once said that America is not a place, it's a road. Perhaps this is made up, but I do believe it. 

 

Here are my recommendations. First, find people along the way who you can stay with, who can go out to dinner or drinks with you, who can hand you some snacks for the road in the morning (If you decide to drive through southern Arizona, let me know). Avoid Texas if at all possible, but also try to make your way through New Mexico, since it's one of the great places in the country. Podcasts are fun, but really you should spend time to build a soundtrack. I found it was really fun to figure out the albums I wanted to play based on where I was driving. Take whatever time you need to drive to some weird Atlas Obscura site. Maybe take some time and read a book featuring a famous road trip; it'll help you get in the road trip mood, and also you can follow along in places. Don't eat junk food, it will make you feel like a monster. Don't think you can drive 12 - 14 hours each day, I set it at 8-9 hours, and I was fine. Find larger cities and go to a baseball game, even if you go alone, it's the summer, and baseball is a really wonderful thing. (Actually, go to a minor league game, they have weirder giveaways and theme nights) It's not hard to find websites for little towns you might find yourself in, in the evenings. Look up whether or not there are any weird events, like a concert in the park, or some local production of Twelfth Night. Go! Maybe you're not driving in the summer. In that case, a lot of the same ideas still hold.

 

Be careful what you have displayed in your back seat of your car, it's not uncommon for people to break into a car to grab an easily observed laptop. I purposely kept all the valuables in the trunk and made sure that the back seat had some beat-up boxes, with things covered up where I could. I had a plastic tub I kept in the passenger seat that had snacks and napkins and other important items, which I could easily hide away in a glove box. 

 

Mostly though, I remembered how different everything ended up being. It was green and lush in New England, and it gave way to pouring rain in Ohio, and then a day later I was in warm, beautiful Nashville. There were moments when I was driving through Missouri where I had nothing to do but smile. I swam in a hotel pool in Oklahoma City right before sunset, just me in this big stupid pool. In Albequerque I marveled at the beautiful freeway overpasses, red and light blue. I saw Meteor Crater in northern Arizona, and drove through the forests of Flagstaff before descending to the hot desert of Phoenix. Enjoy the opportunity. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Lesson of the last six months: never underestimate my ability to get the wrooong end of the stick.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is all really good advice; thanks so much!  I'm getting the car-packing part finalized, and it looks like I'll have to do it all solo.  Now I just have to plan the route.

 

Ben: Flight was an option, but I'll need a car in California and enough people here and elsewhere told me the drive is doable.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I drove from the UK to Germany recently. Although not alone since I didn't want a car over here. While it's probably nothing compared to the distance you're driving, it was still super fun!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So my life had been pretty rough for the past few months before June, I had to quit a dead-end job because another employee (the son of one of the owners, which made him untouchable and it dangerous to accuse him of the things he was absolutely doing) was stealing cigarettes, hunting and fishing licenses, bait, soda, anything you could get at a gas station and fucking up my numbers, which gets scary when those numbers are reported to the state and are heavily regulated like cigs and licenses, I couldn't get another job in town for a couple months because it was a tiny town with no real jobs and a ton of competition for what there was available, relying on my GF to help me out while I was broke (and she was finishing college and in a terrible mood anyways, so the financial side of things added to that made things tense), dealing with some health issues without either insurance or money, living in a wreck of a house with sky-high utilities bills, terrible internet, gross water that made us and our rabbit ill, no real friends in town after college, just kinda feeling lost and without any real options. 

Then, I moved to Duluth at the beginning of June, which was stressful at first because it's a long way from home and my entire massive extended family all lives within a couple hours of each other, and I was going to be about 10 hours away from them all and I share their farmer mentality of staying close to home, but since I got here things have been really looking up. Within a couple days of starting my job search I happened into an eyeglasses maker, where an old buddy I've known since kindergarten was working (I thought he had moved away), he helped me get a solid 9-5 full-time job I really enjoy with health and dental, 401k, paid vacation and all that, our new apartment is very nice and in good shape, and actually cheaper than the old place at the end of the day since utilities are included, the rabbit is in good health with a specialized vet right down the street, things with the GF are going much better now that she's done with school and I'm not a bum, I have a couple of college friends up here who are also looking for people to hang out with, there are some communities of makers I have some ins with, we know people who raise chickens and ducks and thus have a surfeit of free food, basically a total turn around in fortune. 

I went from feeling lost, miserable and alone all day to feeling like I actually have a future I can look forward to, living in a town I love with a person I love who is no longer freaking out over graduating, in an apartment I like and having social options again, and I feel just great. 

There isn't really an upshot to all this, but holy shit did things really turn around for me in only a week, and I can barely believe it actually happened and I wanted to share.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There isn't really an upshot to all this, but holy shit did things really turn around for me in only a week, and I can barely believe it actually happened and I wanted to share.

 

I'm glad things are looking up, Neon!

 

I have a few friends who also have that farmer mentality and it's very frustrating for me sometimes. They're adamant about staying put, near their family, because that's what counts in the end, but their family's all miserable people (not that yours are, of course) and they're turning out to be miserable themselves. I just want to yell, "Move away, what's the worst that could happen?" but I know it's not that simple.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's really good to hear Neon. I hope others having down times read that and see how quick things can turn around.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Neon, that's awesome!  I'm glad things have had such a turn around for you. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Bought a house! It's glorious. Apartment life was getting to me. A rogue AI once said.

 

I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it. 

 

 

If there's a stink, I'd like it to be my own thank you.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My sister gets married on Friday and I'm moving into a house with my girlfriend in two weeks.

 

Life is just happening so hard all over the place right now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×