WillWybrow.com

It’s actually really terrible how often I use words like ‘gay’ and ‘homo’ and ‘fag’ in everyday speech. Let me straighten it out, though, it’s just immaturely using the words as generic negative nouns and adjectives. That’s using the words, not their meaning.

Gay people are actually awesome. Not by virtue of being gay, (positive discrimination is still discrimination) but because they put up with so much shit from conservatives and religious nuts (cf. Proposition 8 - what a cunt). I really want the Warwick Atheists and Warwick Pride to do some event together sometime, to show them that we’re supporters!

Describing things as ‘gay’ when they’re going wrong, or people as ‘fags’ when they annoy me isn’t being homophobic (well, it is by accident I suppose) if I don’t intend to be homophobic. It’s just playground habits that I haven’t kicked yet.

But I’m going to go for it! Everyone help me out by interrupting me when I’m accidentally homophobic and reminding me that this post exists.

They say that a bad workman blames his tools, but I think that’s a little unfair on the workman.

Sure, if he unfairly blames them, the saying still holds. If the tools are in full working order then he has no excuse. Should have practised more.

If he’s got a shitty set of tools but has every opportunity to get new ones, the saying also still holds. He has only himself to blame.

If, on the third hand, the workman has no choice but to be supplied by a third party and cannot do anything to improve the quality of his broken hammer or blunt saw, he can’t exactly take responsibility for doing the best he can with what he’s given. I think there is a minority of unfairly blamed metaphoric workmen who are struggling along in silence, unable to point out the flaws in their shoddy equipment because everyone jumps to the conclusion that he’s projecting his own faults onto his stuff.

My best wishes go out to them, wherever and whoever they are.

I’m sure we’ve all heard people fill in the blanks “If I had a [unit of money] for every [event] that happened, I’d be rich,” right? Well, you ought to have.

If you had to pick one word that you were paid for hearing, or paid for having heard, which word would you pick?

There are a lot of words out there, some of which you’d definitely hear all the time. But what if you lost the money every time you used the word yourself?

You’d have to optimise. I mean, there are words that come up all the time (”the” or “and”), but chances are you say them as much as you hear them, so it would have to be something people said to you that you never said. Some of you would pick your names, I’m sure, since how often do you refer to yourself in the third person? One introduction for years of having people speak to you is a sound investment. Unfortunately, if your name is also a commonly used word in the English language, you have a bit of a problem.

What do you think?