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I’m scared of heights.

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if the facts had been “two men married each other”, it might be an agenda.

however, the adoption seems like less of an agenda, since gay adoption is not the lightning rod that gay marriage is.

it’s going to be hard nowadays to be the one to “break the news” of the existence of homosexuality to your kids, gently, in 5th or 6th grade or whenever one thinks it’s appropriate.

the word is out.

gay is just too accepted mainstream now.

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[quote=spdrun]Just saying … not all straight people have kids or remain monogamous either.[/quote]

yeah but all my gay friends had a way easier time getting laid than i did…

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When Did People Start Saying “Bucket List”?

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By June Thomas

Jack Nicholson at ‘The Bucket List’ premiere, 2007.
Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

I love a cultural coincidence.

JUNE THOMAS
June Thomas is a Slate culture critic and editor of Outward, Slate’s LGBTQ section. Follow her on Twitter.
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Two of the TV shows I watched last night mentioned bucket lists. On Glee, Kurt Hummel, all of 17, whipped out his iPhone and showed his boyfriend, Blaine, a few of the things he intends to do before he dies. (My favorite: “Arrive at school in a hot air balloon.”) On NCIS, Tony DiNozzo, shaken by a terrorist attack, became hyperaware of his own mortality and printed out a list that included more prosaic choices: “Date a Bond girl and/or Miss Universe. Develop a catch phrase. The luge.” When I tweeted about this, @magazinemama reminded me that on last week’s Parks & Recreation, doofus Andy was also working on a bucket list. His items included winning the lottery, making the best grilled-cheese sandwich ever, and remaking Kazaam (this time getting it right).

This got me wondering: Where did the term bucket list come from? Surely it didn’t originate with the Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman film from 2007 in which, to quote the Internet Movie Database, “Two terminally ill men escape from a cancer ward and head off on a road trip with a wish list of to-dos before they die.”

I turned to the newly released fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, but, sadly, it’s not included. Executive editor Steve Kleinedler told me that, although he’s been keeping an eye on the term, it needs a few more years in usage before it proves itself worthy of addition to the big book.

A quick search through Google Books suggests that though the phrase was popularized by the 2007 film, it was indeed used occasionally before Jack and Morgan hit the road. Its first application seems to have been in computer programming: e.g., “Guava compiler knows statically that there are no references from buckets inside of one bucket list to objects inside another.”

In 1993, the phrase showed up in a different context: a National Labor Relations Board report indicating agenda items that must be postponed (getting warmer): “The conferees were told that if comments or questions came up concerning bargainable issues or items that required more information, these matters should be placed in a ‘bucket list’ to indicate that they could not be considered at the conference.”

In 2004, the term was used—perhaps for the first time?—in the context of things to do before one kicks the bucket (a phrase in use since at least 1785) in the book Unfair & Unbalanced: The Lunatic Magniloquence of Henry E. Panky, by Patrick M. Carlisle. That work includes the sentences, “So, anyway, a Great Man, in his querulous twilight years, who doesn’t want to go gently into that blacky black night. He wants to cut loose, dance on the razor’s edge, pry the lid off his bucket list!”

*

Bonus cultural coincidence: Parkour has also cropped up in several TV shows of late—most recently Inspector Lewis (those wacky Oxford students!), New Girl, Happy Endings, and Work of Art. (It was on The Office, which usually lags behind the cultural zeitgeist—Scranton!—back in 2010.) Parkour’s origins are more straightforward. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it derives from the French term parcours de combattant—literally, “combatant’s course,” or more loosely, obstacle course. It is also related to the Medieval Latin percursus, the past participle of percurrere, meaning to run through or rove.

[scaredyclassic]

i regret not being a plastic surgeon who did breast enlargement. I knew i shoudlvvebeen a plastic surgeon, but back int he 1970s it seemed limited to new noses for jewish girls in my neighborhood. who know there were millions of breasts that wantedto be worked on…

breast enlargements not covered by obamacare, right

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i always kinda wished id turned out gay, maybe in a preaids nyc situation, ina nice loft apt……lot of sex, no kids, fashionable…it sounds like it could be so excellent.

just wasnt meant to be. im an ordinary breeder.

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pretty much all body parts ona hot chick are very hot. the muslims have the right idea…cover up, woman. the back of this one girl’s neck used to just drive me nuts with desire. arms legs. …hair….jeez. the nipple is the least of it…

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i guess it is kind of an agenda. the agenda of gay is normal.

i just don’t see it as sexual. that’s in the parents head. two people adopt a baby is just as “sexual”. it opens the question, well, what are they doing to produce the baby.

the sexuality is related to the baby, not to two moms or two dads.

hell, i was under the impression for many years that sex between adults involved one person peeing on the other. not sure where i got that/

not any weirder for 2 women to pee on each other than a man and a woman ina loving, peeing relationship.

I guess i wouldve been confused as a child to discover 2 women peeing on each other. Mom, I thought only a man and a woman peed on each other? but my teacher says different. tell me why mama?

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To the OP: the ex. Does seem to suggest that gay people are normal.

That was radical 30 years ago… Not today.

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I’m sick of anti drug education. Mainly cause its lame. The anti drug Ed I got in jus made us all laugh out loud. I believe it encouraged drug use.

I would prefer to handle the issue myself.

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perhaps a trip to the uk to meet larkin? wait, hes dead. and he wouldve hated me anyway…

Aubade
BY PHILIP LARKIN

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

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I just don’t see myself as ending up in a nursing home. 
 
Based on family history I think it’s going to be a heart attack, big, sudden, game-over in seconds.
 
I don’t think there’s going to be much time for reflection, just a   moment of utter confusion and disorientation, like getting your head severed or trying to read your health insurance policy.
 
I’ve been thinking of what to put on a bucket list, something not a goal, but just something to do for the hell of it, just because it would be fun or interesting or cool.  I was drinking peach schnapps last night pondering it, and also looking at family photos from when the kid who left was little, which is the worst thing to do.  Nostalgia is the worst, esp. coupled with peach schnapps. 
 
I can’t think of one thing to put on a bucket list.  I’d kind of like to go for a really  long walk – like maybe 5 thousand miles.  Maybe that.  Just go for a really really long walk.  But I don’t think I’ll do that.  I have no bucket list.
 
On the goal list though, I definitely want to be able to do a muscle up.  It’s like a pull up but you pull high and then press your arms down on the bar to get all the way up.  I’m getting close…. I guess it’s only goals.

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hmmm. ok. i’ll think about.

but maybe my bucket list will consist only of: a good death:

philosophy excerpt…

As Herodotus tells it, Croesus, the ancient king of Lydia, was once visited at his palace by Solon, a wise sage and Athenian lawgiver. The king was delighted to have the itinerant philosopher in residence, and welcomed him with warm hospitality. For several days, Croesus instructed his servants to show off the full measure of the king’s enormous power and wealth.

Once he felt Solon had been sufficiently awed by his riches, Croesus said to him:

“Well, my Athenian friend, I have heard a great deal about your wisdom, and how widely you have travelled in the pursuit of knowledge. I cannot resist my desire to ask you a question: who is the happiest man you have ever seen?”

King Croesus was already certain that he was in fact the happiest man in the world, but wanted to enjoy the satisfaction of hearing his name parroted back to him from such a venerated sage.

But Solon, who was not one for flattery, answered: “Tellus the Athenian.”

The king was quite taken aback and demanded to know how such a common man might be considered the happiest of all.

Tellus, Solon replied, had lived in a city with a government that allowed him to prosper and born fine sons, who had in turn given him many grandchildren who all survived into youth. After enjoying a contented life, he fought with his countrymen, bravely died on the battlefield while routing the enemy, and was given the honor of a public funeral by his fellow Athenians.

Croesus was perplexed by this explanation but pushed on to inquire as to who the next happiest man was, sure that if he wasn’t first, he had to be second.

But again Solon answered not with the king’s name, but with a pair of strapping young Argives: Cleobis and Biton.

Known for their devotion to family and athletic prowess, when their mother needed to be conveyed to the temple of Hera to celebrate the goddess’ festival, but did not have any oxen to pull her there, these brothers harnessed themselves to the incredibly heavy ox cart and dragged it over six miles with their mother aboard. When they arrived at the temple, an assembled crowd congratulated the young men on their astounding feat of strength, and complimented their mother on raising such fine sons. In gratitude for bestowing such honor upon her, the mother of these dutiful lads prayed to Hera to bestow upon them “the greatest blessing that can befall mortal men.” After the sacrifices and feasting, the young brothers laid down in the temple for a nap, and Hera granted their mother’s prayer by allowing them to die in their sleep. “The Argives,” Solon finished the tale, “considering them to be the best of men, had statues made of them, which they sent to Delphi.”

Now King Croesus was livid. Three relative nobodies, three dead men were happier than he was with his magnificent palace and an entire kingdom of his own to rule over? Surely the old sage had lost his marbles. Croesus snapped at Solon:

“That’s all very well, my Athenian friend; but what of my own happiness? Is it so utterly contemptible that you won’t even compare me with mere common folk like those you have mentioned?”

Solon explained that while the rich did have two advantages over the poor – “the means to bear calamity and satisfy their appetites” – they had no monopoly on the things that were truly valuable in life: civic service, raising healthy children, being self-sufficient, having a sound body, and honoring the gods and one’s family. Plus, riches tend to create more issues for their bearers – more money, more problems.

More importantly, Solon continued, if you live to be 70 years old, by the ancient calendar you will experience 26,250 days of mortal life, “and not a single one of them is like the next in what it brings.” In other words, just because things are going swimmingly today, doesn’t mean you won’t be hit with a calamity tomorrow. Thus a man who experiences good fortune can be called lucky, Solon explained, but the label of happy must be held in reserve until it is seen whether or not his good fortune lasts until his death.

“This is why,” Solon finally concludes to Croesus, “I cannot answer the question you asked me until I know the manner of your death. Count no man happy until the end is known.”

Croesus was now sure Solon was a fool, “for what could be more stupid” he thought, than being told he must “look to the ‘end’ of everything, without regard for present prosperity?” And so he dismissed the philosopher from his court.

While the king quickly put Solon’s admonitions out of his mind, the truth of it would soon be revealed to him in the most personal and painful way.

First, Croesus’ beloved son died in a hunting accident. Then, blinded by hubris (excessive pride), he misinterpreted the counsel of the oracles at Delphi and began an ill-advised attempt to conquer King Cyrus’ Persian Empire. As a result, the Persians laid siege to his home city of Sardis, captured the humbled ruler, and placed him in chains on top of a giant funeral pyre. As the flames began to lick at his feet, Croesus cried out, “Oh Solon! Oh Solon! Oh Solon! Count no man happy until the end is known!”

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i am always fascinated by parentchild law partnerships. there are a few that ive met. i always ask about how it works, if they squabble, if they knew from an early age they’d go that way.

the parent part of the partnerships always seems to be a pretty cool character, at least not a visibly type A.

i thought the subejct would make an interesting little article…

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i guess as an actual dumpster diver, I have a different perspective. maybe it requires a certain allegiance or interest in freeganism to see how well lampooned they are…

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