We had a dinner guest from Manhattan the other night. In order to make him feel comfortable and at home here in Florida I wore my “Ask Me About My Pronouns” T-shirt from Target in Watertown, Massachusetts. I neglected to take it off before heading out on a neighborhood golden retriever walk and we happened to meet two relative newcomers to the neighborhood, refugees from Ann Arbor, Michigan. So I had a 20-minute conversation with them while wearing this shirt. During the entire time… they never asked me about my pronouns!
Related… Happy National Pansexual Pride Day to those who celebrate.
Related… let me give a shout-out to Gretchen Whitmer for keeping our neighborhood property values robust. Because she made it illegal for this new neighbor to go into work he was able to keep his high-level job with a Detroit-area company despite having moved to tax-free Florida. Google AI:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer implemented some of the strictest and longest-lasting lockdown measures in the Midwest through numerous executive orders. These policies generated significant controversy, facing both praise for prioritizing public health and fierce criticism over their scope and economic impact.
Whitmer issued nearly 200 executive orders to contain the virus spread. The primary order was the “Stay Home, Stay Safe” order (EO 2020-21), effective March 24, 2020, which: Required all residents to stay home unless they were part of the “critical infrastructure workforce”; Banned all public and private gatherings of any number of people from different households; Ordered all non-critical businesses to temporarily close in-person operations.
In May 2021, Whitmer faced criticism and apologized after a photo showed her at an East Lansing restaurant with a large group, in violation of her own administration’s standing health orders at the time which required social distancing and limited table sizes.
So…what ARE your pronouns, Phil? I’m still going to refer to you as “he/him/his” because I’m cis hetero, non-rainbow-identifying, but you know, just for the record.
Mine are “hey asshole, yeah, I’m talking to you.”
I think electric self-flying passenger drones would be ideal in Michigan. Whitmer’s big push was to improve the roads with the trickle down from higher taxes. Driving in East Lansing is still like operating the moon rover with full Earth gravity while facing hostile enemy combatants. “That road will be re-built ‘real-soon-now’.” I heard Lansing stopped ticketing for loud car exhaust because it was considered “profiling” of indigents and POC. Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders did help her buy some time on the broken roads thing.
Anyway, our country as a whole has done a pretty good job of making stay-at-home the de facto choice for many of us, rather than de jure.
“My pronouns are too complex to explain in a brief discussion,” is my standard answer!
We can use Gender Math Theory (developed in the region that is now Jordan) to create a closed-form for Phil’s complex pronouns. Using Complex Number Theory:
√-1 = i, so the pronouns would be Phil ∈ { iHe, iHim, iHi }
HTH
Also reminds me of a rap song, where the guy says, “My name must be ‘Ain’t Shit’, because all the girlies say, ‘You ain’t shit.'”
[Back to work for me, in non-governmental, wage-slave jobs, 3 hour lunches are frowned upon.]