u/offlabelselector

I'm a little ways into Banquet for the Damned by Adam Neville and enjoying it so far, but I had to stop and get this off my chest. There's a (minor, as far as I can tell) character who's supposed to be an old money Boston Brahmin, who's studying abroad in Scotland and understands multiple ancient languages. The text specifically notes that his accent gives him away as old money. But the narrator, Luke R Francis, makes him sound like one of the toughs from Guys & Dolls. Francis is Scottish so I can't fault him too much for not knowing the nuances of different Northeastern US accents, but it's so hilariously incongruous.

Have you ever had a narrator be so off with an accent that it took you out of it?

I recently moved from the Washington DC area out west, and I really really miss the food options.

In DC, you can get vegan anything. Diner breakfast? Fast food? Soul food? Nice dinner out? Deli sandwich? Donuts? Dessert? Any international cuisine you can think of? It's all there. Grocery stores have vegan convenience food like sandwiches and plant-based sushi rolls.

Philly and NYC are also great. Last time I went to Philly, I had MULTIPLE options for getting a Philly cheeze steak at fully plant-based restaurants.

The town I'm living in now, which is not small, has no vegan restaurants. There's a ton of vegetarian, but it all has dairy in everything. Restaurants don't have vegan/plant-based sections on their menus or even clearly-marked vegan items. Even the grocery stores only offer sushi with fish/crab and salads with meat and cheese.

Internet enshittification is also not helping because if you search "vegan" it scours reviews for key words, so someone saying "There aren't really any good vegan options here" makes it show up in the search results. And "vegetarian" often shows up as a "synonym" even though dairy and eggs are a pretty big difference, both being major allergen on top of being animal products.

At the end of the day this is forcing me to cook/meal prep more and spend less money on food, so it's probably good for me. But right now I'm sick and just want to order delivery and I had to complain about it.

Edit: there are also multiple places here willfully misrepresenting themselves as vegan while serving dairy.

I might have your package, please reach out

Selfishly, because it would be easier not being with you if you weren't lonely too. I know I'm not the one you want, you've been clear and I know I can't persuade you to have feelings you don't have. But it hurts extra to see you lonely and feeling rejected when at the same time I want so much to hold you and kiss you and tell you how desired you are.

I just moved to Bellevue from the DC area and am doing some more decluttering post-move. My old community had a "Free Market" set up at the local shopping center where people could leave books, household goods, food, and other stuff they wanted to get rid of. I was also pretty active in my local Buy Nothing group, but the Free Market was good for things that weren't worth the effort of arranging a pickup/dropoff with Buy Nothing and weren't necessarily something a thrift store would want (but still things that people would take).

People also often put tables full of free stuff outside in front of their homes, but my new neighborhood doesn't seem to have enough foot traffic for that to work.

Is there anything like the Free Market in Bellevue?

Update: today at SE 4th St and 155 Ave SE I spotted what I thought was a really large Little Free Library but turned out to be a "community cupboard" with various items in it (and a gorgeous painting of mountains and trees along the top). That's exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking of if anyone knows of more like it

I'm going to just talk about my experience and see if anyone relates, and want to be careful not to generalize because I don't think this is some universal trend or anything.

I've always been bi, but more strongly attracted to men and never dated any women. My experience with girls when I was younger was limited to occasional makeouts.

I spent my late teens and early 20s trying to make sense of my sexuality and gender identity but wound up being in a series of heterosexual relationships, most of them because it was easy more than appealing, and having a boyfriend felt like a kind of armor against getting sexualized (and gendered) by other men.

My last relationship, also my best and longest, was with someone who turned out to be a trans lesbian. I came out several years into our relationship, and she came out as trans about two years after me and then realized she wasn't at all attracted to men.

So I have been single since then and have never dated as a man, and I'm having a really hard time being motivated to even try. A big part of the problem is related to the title of the post:

I had always dated men, and when I came out as trans I was in a relationship with someone who seemed to be a man at the time, so I identified as a gay man. But I have never actually dated as a gay man and I'm not really interested in it. I find men attractive, I was just a couple weeks ago swooning over LaKeith Stanfield in I Love Boosters, but the thought of dating or being in a relationship with a man just holds no appeal for me. (It's not an accident that my go-to example of finding a man attractive was someone in a movie.)

But everyone in my life seems weirdly insistent on me being gay. My friends, including my ex, keep talking about getting me a boyfriend and no one seems to consider me dating a woman as a possibility. Even when I say I'm not gay, I basically get told "No, you're wrong, you are gay, you just haven't met the right guy yet." It's like comphomo.

My whole life people keep telling me I'm wrong about who I am.

When I was younger and said I felt masculine, I got "No, you're wrong, you're the most feminine person I've ever met!"

When I said I didn't like the thing I was majoring in, I got told "No, you're wrong, that's your dream!"

Now I keep trying to tell people I'm not gay and I get "No, you're wrong, you'll change your mind when you find the right man."

I've read Lou Sullivan's biography (shout out to Brice Smith's "Lou Sullivan: Daring to be a Man Among Men") and I am old enough to remember when trans men were regarded, if at all, as a kind of Super Lesbian which ironically is why it took me so long to realize I was trans.

But I feel like now people who know me are putting me in this box and assuming that being with men is the most true/authentic thing and anything else is denial/internalized homophobia, and it's frustrating because to me it feels like even as a man I'm still being pushed towards dating men because that's what everyone around me is comfortable with.

I'm a male with a history of frequent atypical UTIs, and this last time I've been experiencing a lot of lingering bladder pain even after kicking the infection. In the past, cold marshmallow root infusions have been helpful so I have been doing that again. However, I'm getting a weird reaction to it now where my tongue immediately becomes very dry after drinking a cup.

A week or so ago, I also tried a shot of aloe vera juice and immediately got a sore throat that lasted about 24 hours. Aloe gel is irritating to my skin so I'm assuming I have an allergy to it, but now I'm worried I have a sensitivity to all mucilagenous herbs. (I don't have a strong reaction to slippery elm afaik, but I have only had it in blends the last several years.)

Has anyone else experienced this with mucilagenous herbs?

I need to talk about this book. Found it in a Little Free Library and just finished it. I can't find anybody talking about it; all I have found online is one actual professional review and another review that's just a summary. It was published in 1994 and I'm really surprised it hasn't gotten more attention in the last three decades.

The story is about a young woman and her ten-year-old son going back to her hometown in rural Utah, where they have to deal with her estranged husband and difficult family. It's about Mormonism, sexuality, abuse, and family dynamics. There are some extremely upsetting parts and at times I was so angry at some of the characters I had to take a break from reading, but it's compelling. Took me a few chapters to get into but once I got going, the dynamic structure made it a pretty fast read. It's divided into very short chapters with frequent POV switches between the two main characters.

I'm very curious to know if anyone else here has read this, because I couldn't find anything on reddit.

https://preview.redd.it/0epaw6ykbc3h1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85a48e8c1ed72908d5603b50fd7d681b693e6f6a