Origins Gaming Convention 2017 and the Pipesmoker's Parade

I went to the Origins Gaming Convention this year with Big Mike. Both of us are in Columbus, both of us are avid gamers, so why not? Besides, after the game at the convention there's drinks and dinner in Short North. I started out with breakfast at Big Mike's house. As usual, Mike's hospitality is truly beyond the pale.

Mexican Breakfast

In the bad old days, a Mexican breakfast consisted of coffee and cigarettes, optionally followed by a shot of tequila.  At Mike's place, we have breakfast tortillas (spicy sausage, eggs, salsa), a margarita on the rocks, and coffee made from freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee beans from someplace in South Africa.  Mike is a coffee aficionado, and buys green coffee beans from strange places, most of which don't appear on a map.  Since green coffee beans will keep forever, Mike roasts a small portion about once a week or so, so as to always have fresh coffee on hand.  He says mine (Folger's) tastes like the floor sweepings from a sawmill in August.

Thus refreshed and rejuvenated from the bloody night before (what do you think I'm inferring?  That we went to an AA meeting last night?), we headed down to the convention, and - were stopped.

The Pipe Smoker's Parade was in full swing, supported by the Militant Muff Munchers.  They blocked the street, and the fucking skyway was closed off due to construction or security or something.

Pipe Smokers on Parade

The Parade

Parade - No End in Sight

Here's my rant.  The word tolerance, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is:

†1.1 a.1.a The action or practice of enduring or sustaining pain or hardship; the power or capacity of enduring; endurance. Obs.

b.1.b Phys. The power, constitutional or acquired, of enduring large doses of active drugs, or of resisting the action of poison, etc.; hence diminution in the response to a drug after continued use. Also const. to. Cf. tolerant a. c, tolerate v. 1 b, toleration 1 b.

c.1.c Forestry. The capacity of a tree to endure shade. More widely in Biol., the ability of any organism to withstand some particular environmental condition. Const. to. Cf. tolerant a. d. orig. U.S.

d.1.d Biol. The ability of an organism to survive or to flourish despite infection with a parasite or an otherwise pathogenic organism.

e.1.e Immunol. The ability to accept without an immunological reaction an antigen that normally produces one.

†2.2 The action of allowing; licence, permission granted by an authority. Obs.

3.3 The action or practice of tolerating; toleration; the disposition to be patient with or indulgent to the opinions or practices of others; freedom from bigotry or undue severity in judging the conduct of others; forbearance; catholicity of spirit.

4.4 Technical uses. a.4.a Coining. The small margin within which coins, when minted, are allowed to deviate from the standard fineness and weight: also called allowance. (Cf. toleration 5, remedy n. 4.)

b.4.b In Mech., an allowable amount of variation in the dimensions of a machine or part. More widely, the allowable amount of variation in any specified quantity.

5.5 attrib. and Comb.: tolerance dose Med., a dose, esp. of radiation, believed to be received or taken without harm; tolerance level, the level that can be tolerated or is acceptable; spec. in Med. = tolerance dose above; tolerance limit, a limit laid down for the permitted variation of a parameter of a product.
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Draft partial entry September 2007

 ▸ tolerance zone n. a designated area in which prostitution is tolerated by the authorities.
   Quot. 1924 may refer to an area in which performances involving erotic dancing or a striptease are permitted: it is not clear to what extent the reference to ‘dancing girls’ is euphemistic. 

Dancing girls.  Right.  They used to be called Hoochie Coochie girls, and the meaning was obvious.

Today, tolerance no longer means what it used to mean.  What it means today is that if I, being a fat ugly outspoken old heterosexual white man, do not fully support the fags and the dykes, I'm not tolerant.  Live and let live isn't good enough.  I must stand and watch this stupid fucking parade, when I'd rather be across the street at the gaming convention, and they, the fags and the dykes, have every right in the world to obstruct me and make me stand around, waiting for some religious zealot to pop up out of a garbage can waving an AK-47 and screaming "Die, you motherless commie godless crazy home wrecking door knob sucking fags!" before spraying everything in sight with 7.62.  I'm not the only one thinking in these terms, either.  The place had more cops in it than the Policeman's Ball, and I'll bet half were bicycle cops, traveling in groups of three.

I'm sick and tired of being tolerant.  I'm willing to live and let live, or at least I used to be.  Not so much anymore, I'm thinking.  I have no children, and I'm not good daddy material, but I'll tell you one thing for damned sure: I do not want to try and explain to a boy of less than 12 years just why he sees two guys swapping spit with each other in public, and how it's okay for them to dress in women's clothes but not everyone else.  Because, frankly, it isn't okay, and there isn't a damned thing they, the great out of the closet minority, can say to me that will make it okay.  I don't give my approval on this one.

Meanwhile, my number one question is that if we're all progressively tolerant and Kumbaya with everyone, when are the cops so nervous?