Earth Day faggotry

Oh.

What is this?  Did I actually used to have a proper texty blog or whatever?

Apparently, so...  Like,YEARS ago.

Right, so where did we leave off, then?


So, T and I fulfilled our minimal environmental stewardship duties as upstanding Millennials, and participated in an Earth Day beach cleanup event, along with other students from his uni.  This, being Seattle and all, we're both rather diligent when it comes to observing 420 Day (year round, mind).  But, we'd been rather lax, when it came to giving back to our much abused biosphere.

To rectify that, we agreed to volunteer away our Saturday morning for a different sort of green cause.  After managing a few hours of sleep, stopping off at Starbucks, and then mustering far too early at a local beach and marine preserve, we were selected for rubbish detail.  Oh, joy.

For the next few hours, we proceeded to scour the shoreline for anything that would be unnatural to an intertidal substrate (as the budding marine biologists in our midst liked to say), and earnestly place it into our standard issue green, rubbish buckets.  Odd thing, though: there wasn't much in the way of proper rubbish to be found.  With, one notable exception.

We broke up into small groups and made our way along the shoreline.  Some of the people in our group we knew; some, we didn't.   About an hour or so into it, it was becoming rather clear that there wouldn't be heaps of rubbish enough to even half fill our green buckets.  And, I could feel a numbing boredom begin to sap what was left of our collective enthusiasm and green inspired idealism.

Always good for a reliable giggle on this side of the pond, I remarked somewhat loudly to no one in particular, 'I can't find anything but fucking fag butts'!  Which, received some knowing chuckles, a few bewildered titters, and more than a few semi-horrified stares in my direction.  Once nearly everyone understood the juvenile slang usage (as well as the particular context) of my mostly awkward attempt at humour, the mischievous logophile in me just couldn't bear to leave it well enough alone.

So, I began to replace 'fucking' with ever more colourful adjectives to my Tourette's outburst of random faggotry: dirty, nasty, mingin, discarded, spent, used, old, dumped, and of course, fagged.  Yeah, such maturity for a graduate student of the law.  ><  Perhaps, it was merely to relieve the boredom.  Or, perhaps a troubling overcompensation for an introvert to obfuscate his introvertedness (errm, introversion, that is).  Regardless, it succeeded with surprising effect.  Actually, it probably succeeded a bit too well.

A few bro types seemed to be enjoying the chance opportunity to use 'fag' just a tad too much, in my opinion.  But, I was the one who not only opened the door, but all but dared them to let their latent semi-homophobia out to play in public for a bit.  Once, I realised that I unthinkingly provided them with the permission and opportunity to use the word, there was little that I could do, but let it run its course, with no further encouragement on my part.  Which it did, thankfully.  And, even the once plentiful fag butts eventually seemed to run out, shortly thereafter.

In retrospect, I suppose that I can take some small consolation that the emphasis did seem to continue to be on creative wordplay, rather than mere gay slurs.  So, perhaps, some vocabulary skills may have been broadened, as a result.  Vocabulary empowerment: 1, and  LGBT advancement: nil.

Oh, and score one more, for a restored, fag butt-free shoreline. =P