Tuesday 24 February 2009

Pancake-less Day

I always worry, when parking on the street, that something will happen to my car, and indeed, last night I do seem to have acquired rather a nasty and inexplicable scratch. Unless it happened in the church car park on Sunday. It has pissed me off no end, either way.

And I'm blaming this Comet Lulin that Sleepy told me about. Apparently it's still coming at us and will be visible in the southern skies tonight. Not here though, since it's overcast and raining. Higher levels are expecting sleet later.

I'm also blaming the comet for me feeling too tired and grouchy to make any pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Hopefully it's not a compulsory part of the deal, although I do feel deprived. One of the pancake houses were having some kind of deal on pancakes today, but they only sell those thick ones, which just don't do it for me.

I was gobsmacked and yet cheered, since this is something that occupies my mind a lot lately - for reasons I may discuss at some point, but which has nothing to do with my own personal life (just in case Kevin is reading this and worries I may have gone off him) - that in China, attitudes towards the LGBT community are finally changing. I was equally gobsmacked to read that homosexuality was illegal until 1997 and regarded as a mental illness until 2001.
That must have been odd.
Imagine you have an actual mental illness, say, having a psychosis and then suddenly, you wake up one morning and see on the news that your psychosis is no longer classified as a mental illness. Where does that leave you? Probably more psychotic than ever.
I don't imagine that any gay or lesbian people in China actually believed they were mentally ill, so the joke's on the other people....what's the technical term I'm looking for...oh yes, bigots.

But in China, I can see there being a bit of an imbalance. For example, it would be rather convenient really, if some huge percentage of the male population suddenly realised they were gay, or that area just outside of gay where you could go either way, or that bit just along the line from that, where you're not really gay, but then you happen to fall in love with someone of the same sex.
Happiness all round! Instead of there being abso-freaking-lutely no chance of your finding anyone to spend your life or have sex with, you are snuggling up with the man of your dreams.

On t'other hand, not so good for women who desire a same sex relationship, because that takes even more ladies out of an already sparse potential breeding pool.
Oh well, maybe not such a bad thing after all, I believe the Chinese government are still rather concerned about the size of the population.

And moving along.

I, like Sleepy, still snigger at some of the amusing uses of the word 'beaver' heard here.
But I was chuckling like an adolescent this afternoon, because a bloke at work came in and complained about how his company had issued the men new helmets and his was uncomfortable. He needed some felt to make his helmet feel better. Someone said we had some fun fur in the storage room, but he thought that would make his helmet too warm.
I dunno.
Maybe the humour doesn't translate, or maybe I'm just much too old to still find this funny.
But I bloody did.

2 comments:

Sleepy said...

I had pancakes made for me...
Went for the Traditional Golden Syrup, Sugar and Lemon Juice to start.
Then on to the Nutella and Mandarin buggers!

Schneewittchen said...

Gawd, proper pancakes with Nutella. Heaven.