I think the title of this post is just going to bring loads of interesting traffic from search engines...I started a blog way back in 2003 mainly with the intention of recording how much of my PhD thesis I had written each day. The blog didn't last more than six month and fortunately for the few readers I had, the rest of world is actually far more interesting blog fodder than my PhD writing up, so in the end the daily word count didn't get mentioned that much. I've got various ideas in my head for longer posts I do want to put up here but am actually frantically hammering out a draft of a chapter of my still unfinished PhD thesis. This accounts for the shortness and generally facile nature of the posts over the last week. God - I hate my PhD, but everyone says you should by the end so hopefully this means the end is not too far away (the end of my thesis, rather than the end of my sanity hopefully). At least I have written something over the last few days.
If anyone cares, today's word count is around 1000. I'm not sure if any of them are any good though...
Anyways - back to gay penguins: what a great story from last Sunday's Observer. I found it whilst browsing their site today; it does though appear that one of the penguins concerned might have been faking his gay-ness, possibly in an attempt to wind up Bible-belt Americans - a laudable aim that he seems to have achieved.
p.s. I'm not sure if the pictured penguin is gay or not, in fact I'm not even sure if it is a male or a female. If there are any penguin experts out there who know about these things, do tell.
You can't tell if a penguin is gay just by looking at it. You have to ask it directions. If it gets flustered and points north, or behind a bush, or to the nearest stretch of open heath in north London, then you might be onto something. In saying that, you can tell some of the older penguins are clearly gay - they act flamboyantly, can be very camp, or in the case of female gay penguins overly butch, and carry banners, rainbow flags or copies of 'Deep South' magazine. Don't worry about these - it's just an identity-politics thing, a hangover from the 80s and 90s. Lots of these penguins lost friends and lovers in the great ICE crisis of those decades, and feel they still have to 'keep the torch alive' on the political side of things in memory of their lost loved ones. Another good way of finding out if a penguin is gay or not is by asking it what bars it goes to. Or if it likes Kylie. Ask if you can go with it to a nightclub. If, when you get there, there are only penguins and they all look identical (but very good looking), are only half listening to the penguin-in-drag singing an old Shirley Bassey number in the corner, and are eyeing-up half the other penguins while ignoring the other half then it's a pretty good chance it's a gay-penguin bar and your friend is gay too. Or ask its girlfriends - gay penguins are the best friends a straight single city girl could have, sweetie. But, at the end of the day, don't bother fretting over the sexuality of a penguin. It only makes them nervous. And you won't like a nervous gay penguin - very catty, very arch. Lastly, in reference to this particular penguin, it's not unusual for a gay penguin to shack up with a lady penguin for appearances. This is known as hiding behind a penguin's 'beard'. It probably had something to do with the publicity. Any spotlight and most gay penguins will shuffle off out of it (this is a good chance to spot a gayP, as the gay ones will sort of groove off to an unheard 70s disco beat, the others will just do what I said - shuffle like downtrodden cows off to slaughter). This is normal for everything, not just gay penguins (like, I don't know, that actor guy in that movie, Top Penguin). Anyway, the upshot of all this, Toby, is No, you can't tell if it is gay just be looking at it. But ask, go on, if you want to know for God's sake ask, it's probably dying to tell you and just can't be bothered going through it all over again even though he knows realistically he should, but honestly, it's just exhausting and never gets any easier and is just such a drag and at the end of the day is just sort of squirmily embarassing. But ask him. The worst he will do is say nothing. Or make a pass.Try Dan savage on this.
ReplyDeleteI meant whether it was a boy or a girl penguin, not a gay penguin. Obviously the Shirley Bassey thing would be a give-away on the latter point! ;-)
ReplyDeleteLOL. I'm sure the restriction of access to books will make schools and children safer than say gun control. Yeehaw!
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