What with the most recent revelations about George Sodini, ads for becoming a "pick-up master" on the OkC front page have an extra layer of ew.

I was a safety monitor at Pride again this year. Last year was pretty uneventful, but this year I got beaned by a tiny, angry old man. He'd missed his contingent (and not "just missed" but missed them by a good 20 minutes or so) and was attempting to book madly down Market St. with his walker in an attempt to catch up with them and get on the float. Alas, this we cannot allow... not only was this guy likely to get run over on his way, but you can't randomly let folks on and off the floats during the parade. So in my attempt to prevent this, the guy finally flipped out and whanged me over the noggin with the metal basket on his walker. I wasn't really injured, but I did end up with a cut that, like head wounds are wont to do, bled like mad. The police hied after the old man (I know not what befell him) and I went off to EMS to get cleaned up. I started bleeding again just before I converted over to wheel monitoring for the Lusty float, but someone had a wet nap, so I wasn't a bloody horror on the parade route.

My head's still a little achey, but that's mostly lack of sleep, methinks. And the fact that the generator on the Lusty Lady float was blowing exhaust straight into my face the whole route... next year, we redirect that shit at the ground or something. Yeesh.

So I did one of them thar WTF report thingies with a friend, primarily so I could increase my completeness percentage (I may have a problem), and it ended up helping me by highlighting a couple of questions that I'd screwed up (did I really say "evolution has no place in a public school"? WTF indeed!).

It got my thinkin' works a-turnin', though. Why is this thing a good idea, except to weed out the morally questionable? I mean, if a prospective friend or dating partner requests one of these reports with ya, and then his or her match percentage with you mysteriously inches up (as mine did with my comrade when I corrected some of those questions).... is that really someone you want to have anything further to do with? A person who quickly abbandons any kind of opinion or belief in order to get closer to somone they've never met?

Unless, of course, that sort of moldable, silly putty based human is what yer lookin' for, in which case more power to you, I guess. I mean, I'm subby and eager to please, but damn if I don't fight tenaciously for my own convictions, and I wouldn't want anyone who didn't respect and desire that in a friend or companion.

It's the motto of the English Order of the Garter, possibly the most prestigious order of knighthood in the UK. It means "Shame on he who thinks evil of it" and according to legend, Edward III said it to preserve the dignity of a lady he was dancing with when her garter slipped off.

The science fiction writer Randall Garrett, on the other hand, always translated it as "I honestly think I'm going to be sick". There are days when I'm playin' around with the flagmod stuff when I feel exactly that way.