Monday, June 26, 2017

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.
______________________________

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?

7 comments:

CWMartin said...

Other than the gaming and the coffee, I'm right with you. My tolerance ends long before their need to flaunt. BTW, you should do parade reviews!

Bob G. said...

Mad Jack:
--Nice to know they still hold ORIGINS in Columbus. Haven't been there since '95. But I hear a lot has changed. And not all of it for the better.
--That "parade" or, as I like to call it: "The Leftist Cavalcade of Morons" may have the "right" to protest whatever they believe, but to OBSTRUCT another planned venue is blatantly WRONG (imho).
Go find a nice (busy) HIGHWAY to protest upon, right?
--I LOVE your definitions of TOLERANCE. I've done that also, because these idiots on display haven't spent enough time LEARNING in school to KNOW what the real definitions ARE.
--What ALL of those asshats NEED to understand is that THEIR rights END where OURS begin. (something that folks such as ourselves actively practice)

Very good post.
Hope you got into the con and had a good time, in spite of the "rainbow" coalition.

Stay safe out there.

Mad Jack said...

CW: Thanks. While I was watching the parade, I couldn't help myself. I started planning an assault, where to place anti-personnel devices to maximize damage, how people could get away with it. All kidding aside, I don't think watching a gay pride parade is the safest recreational activity a family could engage in these days.

Bob G: Thanks. I'm hoping they find a nice set of RR tracks to block and hold a protest on. The train will stop - right?

Then there's the removal of Confederate statues perpetrated by people and porch monkeys who couldn't tell you when the civil war started, can't explain why we had a civil war in the first place, and cannot spell Confederacy.

Glen Filthie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Glen Filthie said...

Wait. What? GREEN coffee beans...? And he roasts them himself? Jack - you gotta go into more detail. I would love to try that...

As for the queers... as the father of a militant lesbian social warrior I hate to say this - but you boys have the right of it. I wish we were all wrong. I racked my conscience for YEARS trying to refute common sense. But hell's bells - you are bang on the money with this.

Don't think for a second that you will be allowed to quietly disapprove of these people and go your own way. No, you not only have to tolerate these sick buggers, you have to APPROVE of them. And not only are you expected to approve of their sexuality, you also have to agree with their politics, morals and ethics too. When my daughter laid that down on me I laid down MY laws... and we pretty much rejected each other. Until she changes I don't want to see her. That little spat broke up three generations of family, and they were utterly shocked that I stood up to them.

Sooner or later we are gonna have to pick sides, and the day is coming that when that guy pops out of the garbage can with an AK47 - there will be people calling him a patriot rather than a loon. There is evil as well as perversion in that crowd and it's high time we faced it.

Err... sorry for the rant.

Mad Jack said...

Just remember to put the soapbox back when you're done with it.

Mad Jack said...

Glen: I'll get hold of Big Mike and ask for a few particulars. I know his source for coffee beans isn't cheap, but the results are worth it. I also know that you can start by roasting your own beans in a hot air popcorn popper, but if you decide to go this route, do it outside. The resulting smoke is black and greasy, and will adhere to the ceiling and walls of your kitchen. Worse, you can't paint over it; it must be removed.