Current Music: Horrible Bar Radio Music; Great Eighties Sounds

Internet Service Provider: Ottos Microbrewery; Alternate Universe

Beer: Helles Lager; All hail yeast; Watch me bubble

Rhetorical practices are powerful indeed. Downshifting from "we are" to 'I am...", coming out seems to cop less to divinity - the "I am" of Yhwe - than to the more jangly and hesitant voice of identity. "I, uh, like, am" But why is it that the wiki, as a medium, seems to call on these forms of enunciation whose repetition not only describes an identity, but is an element of identity , an act of imbrication rather paradoxically described as "coming out?"

Appeals to the apparent honesty of the wiki only beg the question. Ubiquitous information technology demand to be told who you are; even amazon.com demands to know us, what our prefences be. Blogs take the diary and distribute it over a network. What is it about wikis that so intensify this call for confession? Strange how the declaration of such an "interior" truth ( "coming out") seems to work best in such a hive of interconnectivity as the wiki. Even identity needs the commons!

Why not? MitoChondriac

OK so last night was just so interesting that I really have to write about it, bizarre though it be. So I found out about this club catering to the love-that-recently-dareth-to-speak-its-name-except-in-sanFrancisco, Portland and New York, and so I wanted to go there because dancing is my thing, you know, besides the whole love-that-dareth part, and I heard that this was a good place to go if dancing is your thing and all. So I went. By my oneself.

I smoked my anticipatory cigarette in the parking lot and went in. It was 10:45 and nobody was dancing yet so I bought myself a coke and sat down. After a minute I asked the chick/woman sitting next to me if she had been there before and she said she hadn't either, so we became co-commiserators for the evening and smoked and played pool and darts and danced in the same general vicinity. So we were in the smoking lounge and this guy came over and wanted to know if we wanted to come to his friend's house to drink (since the bar had to shut down at 1) so we said ok what the hell we'll drink your alcohol and crash on your beds and steal your tiffany ashtrays. So we followed him to the house and proceeded to learn everything we could ever want, and much that we didnt really want to learn about this guy who is a curator at a museum which makes him the Hot Shit. He invited us two club-virgins because he thought we "looked like interesting people." Did I mention this was probably a half-million dollar house? So we drank his expensive wine and criticized his expensive uncomfortable furniture and smoked more cigarettes and listened to Curator talk about himself and other than the fact that his philosophies seemed fucked up to me and he reminded me how money can make people so detached from reality. EmilFriend

I survived my spring break without any injuries or serious burns. I, like Emil, found myself the club catering to unspeakables in my area. It's funny, I lived in Allentown for 18 years of my life and never got around to going to said club. Naturally, the music was awful, but the crowd was nice and dancing with a bunch of people who are actually half decent at it always brings a smile to my face. I ran into one of my ex's there...for the first time in about a year. Meeting with long lost loves often provides for awkward times, but it was really nice to get a chance to see him again. Sadly, the club only helped to reinforce the disgusting fornicator stereotypes since one of my dear friends had a run-in with a guy in the bathrooms who wouldn't take "no" for an answer. C'mon, seriously--it's not cool to remove the clothing of the unwilling in a bathroom. People are gross. CorruptionMagnet

Has anyone else been greatly amused by the recent...er...developments in wikiland? Emil and I had such delightfully guarded outings on the wiki. It's really bizzare how honest I am to this damn thing. I almost never come out in a classroom setting, because it's a big explanatory pain in the ass to be token queer in a class. From there, it's often an assumption that everything I do needs to incorporate large quantities of faggotry...and I don't exactly operate like that. That's all cool stuff, but it's not my style. That, and I appear straight enough to pull off discretion most of the time. If it comes up directly, I'll usually say something--but I rarely go out of my way to say anything. People assume so many things and, more often than not, they're right. However, I'm not a big, raging queen. I like flannel, camping, and violent movies (insert machismo grunt here). Ok, so I'm not that bad, but I'm not decked out in Hollister either. Let me tell you, though--the path of the straight-acting gay guy is a sad and lonely path to walk. I never purposefuly sidestepped queer culture at any point either, I just can't be a Carson or a Kyan. But whatever, i'm a minority of a minority. sweet.

About these random confessions, I don't know about Emil, but I really couldn't go on much longer without telling my wiki blog the truth. Discretion only goes so far, then you're just lying. Granted, we sort of only half came out--with euphamisms and all. In all fairness, I only followed suit--props to you, Emil. But I just feel that if I'm writing every day, it's going to come up eventually. Somehow though, it didn't seem right making a giant production of it...it's just another thing. I didn't need to declare my queerness with pink paint on the walls of 112 Thomas--that's absurd and grotesque. At the same time, I still felt a little uncomfortable coming out with some direct statement. Since there are so many people reading this who I don't know all that well, it would be really creepy to jusy say something or other about being gay. The whole ordeal of telling someone straight up that you're gay reeks of being trite as well. Especially here. trite sayings on wiki = no. Even when I try to be all nonchalant about it, it still seems like a major production. Hell, I've been out for a decade and it's still weird every time. In ten years many, many chances come up to come out, so originality is paramount. blah blah gay blah blah blah. on to more interesting things. CorruptionMagnet

well, this is mainly for CorruptionMagnet. The best way to make something a non-issue is to be able to talk about it without blinking an eyelash, just like you talk about everything else. Talking casually about being gay might attract attention, but that's not your problem. It's the best kind of interest you can get, because it isn't inherently biased, regardless of the personal feelings of whoever hosts that interest. EmilFriend