# Shameless self-promotion

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [August 22, 2000, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282 "2000-08-22T07:50:05Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/1 "2000-08-22T07:50:05Z")

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I want everyone to repost the best posts they’ve made here.

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**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/2 "2000-08-22T22:42:50Z")

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Aw, that Matt, he’s such a sweetie, a thread called ‘shameless self-promotion’ probably has some nice personal bulletin that he wants to share with us, I’ll just give it a little boost–

WTF?

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**Author:** ![Demo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demo/32/8472_2.png) [@Demo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Demo)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/3 "2000-08-22T22:48:24Z")

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Eh, don’t worry DDG, he’s probably just drunk.

😃

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**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2000, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/4 "2000-08-22T23:05:38Z")

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Define “best post” . . . I’ve had one in the recent French-haters thread I thought was decent, one in an abortion thread, one in a thread about “beauty” as one doper saw it . . . care to tell me what my best post was, matt?

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**Author:** ![MadPoet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8c91f0/32.png) [@MadPoet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadPoet)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/5 "2000-08-23T00:00:34Z")

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Well, I have a few more that may or may not have been better, but this is, to my knowledge, the only post I’ve had Satan respond to, so I will judge it as such. From the thread on Painful Sex:

Gods, this was almost 10 years ago… I still have it burned into my memory like it were yesterday.

I was 14. My best friend was 2 years older, and some of his friends had run away from home and set up a tent in the woods near our house.

Being the sort that likes to bring presents to new neighbors, I nicked some booze from my dad’s liquor cabinet. To keep him from noticing that anything was gone, I just took a little from each bottle and mixed it. In retrospect, I imagine it must have been horrible, but at the time, I didn’t drink any. We took the bottle of firewater down to the woods and went to see our guests.

When we got there, the two guys were sitting and reading a porno, and the girl was fast asleep. Evidently, they had been up drinking most of the past week, and all were still a little tipsy. The guys were chortling over the porno, but stopped when they saw the purloined hooch. My friend introduced me, and they grabbed the bottle and started drinking.

As if awakened by a powerful force, the girl stirred and started reaching for the bottle. She came to a slurred sort of conciousness, and then grabbed the bottle away and chugged the remains. She asked who had brought the booze, and the guys sorta nodded at me. A drunk grin crossed her face, and she crawled over to me. “I’ll have to give you a gift in return”, she said.

The next thing I know, the girl is going for my belt buckle. She had my belt off and my pants down before I could protest, and starts giving me the first blow job of my life. I was paralyzed, not having expected this in the least. She did her thing for about 30 seconds, and then…

…she bit.

Hard.

Like a pit bull locked onto a burgler’s leg, she clamped on to my underaged love baton and wouldn’t let go. It took what seemed like a year to realize the pain wasn’t going to end without intervention, so I wildly trust my thumbs into her mouth like a horses bit, and she finally let go.

She sat there, grinning stupidly at me. I was too busy doubling over in pain to really notice though. I gingerly pulled my pants up and tried to make excuses and leave. She said “Awww… let me kiss and make better…”

I don’t remember exactly, but my friend says I slapped her as she tried to get close. Then I ran for it.

I peed a little red that day, but there was no way I was telling anyone of the indignity, so I went without medical attention. It went away after a night’s sleep. To this day, if a partner so much as brushes me with her teeth, I get post-traumatic flashbacks and have to fight the urge to run away crying. It took a long time after that to enjoy blowjobs again.

Well, it took a year after that to convince someone to give me one, at least.

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**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/6 "2000-08-23T01:51:08Z")

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Here are some of mine:

> [@](#):
>
> Let me just say that it is very inconvenient to be a pacifist, anti-police-brutality social democrat who is attracted to army uniforms, police uniforms, and business suits.

> [@](#):
>
> I’d rather fail as an animal and succeed as a human being.

> [@](#):
>
> At dinner with your parents and your boring friends, quietly reflect on how you spent the last half-hour before you arrived with a six-inch dildo in your ass.
> 
> Watching a speech by an unpleasant political candidate, calculate whether their head would go splat, whumf, or kapow if you shot it off their shoulders.
> 
> Contemplate what you would do with the money after selling photos to Allô Police of a noted televangelist licking the boots of a professional underage male dominatrix.
> 
> Wondering if there is a bounty on the head of Richard Simmons, and wondering what portion of the body needs to be intact in order to collect.
> 
> Imagine dropping Rudolph Giuliani eye-first directly onto the pointed tip of Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space.

> [@](#):
>
> This thread is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt at the usual corporatist bullshit which already affects out systems with sequential expert solutions until they shatter or rot. That being the case, as a non-definite-articled netizen, I will now inject my democratically expressed opinion as to the issues faced by our net’ion, as a technique of popular protest against the corporatist definite-articled regime.

> [@](#):
>
> Rickjay, go fuck yourself with a wood rasp. You have no fucking clue. You don’t know what it’s like to:
> 
> 1. have your parents mindlessly parrot at you, “Go to bed earlier, you’ll be fresher in the morning,”
> 2. go to bed at 9,
> 3. lie in the dark for five hours,
> 4. finally fall asleep at two anyway,
> 5. have to wake up at 5 regardless,
> 6. have to function for the whole day on 3 hours of sleep,
> 7. fall asleep,
> 8. get in trouble for same, and then
> 9. repeat EVERY SINGLE MOTHERFUCKING DAY FOR SEMESTERS ON END.
> 
> This is not an exaggeration, asswipe. This is what I had to go through from the time I turned 12 to the time I started university.
> 
> YOU CANNOT REALIGN YOUR NATURAL SLEEP SCHEDULES BY MORE THAN AN HOUR AND EXPECT TO FUNCTION OPTIMALLY. Walk a fucking mile in my shoes before you come and tell us we’re pasty-skinned whiners.
> 
> New word: diurnofascist. It means “one of that subset of early birds who traipse through life expecting that everything and everyone naturally obeys their sleep cycle.” They’re no better than the heterosexuals who think that everybody naturally shares their sexual orientation.

> [@](#):
>
> For the last three years, I’ve developed my personality from the pathetically shy creature I used to be and blossomed as an individual. I have been opened up to new ways of thinking, new concepts of ethical, philosophical, political, and religious thought, and new experiences by my exposure to the gay community.
> 
> At half-past eleven pm, I make myself coffee, shower, shave, put on my nice tight jeans or some sexy camo’s, choose a good-looking t-shirt to put on, maybe add a vest or collared shirt especially if it’s cool out. I walk down through quiet, dark city streets to a neighbourhood where everything is lights and sounds. Men and women stroll around, carelessly chatting and holding hands, laughing and gossiping, as if it were four pm on a lazy weekend afternoon.
> 
> I go into my favourite club, pay my admission. There aren’t a whole lot of people yet. I sit down, and watch some guys dance. They’re enjoying the music, moving their bodies, enjoying the sensation of sheer energetic motion.
> 
> A little group walks into the club and I recognize a guy I know who I haven’t seen for six months. I wave him over, kiss him on both cheeks, greet his friends. His friends go off to the other dance floor, and we sit and chat, coming up to date on what’s been going on in our lives. We exchange phone numbers.
> 
> The music’s a bit slow, so I walk out and head over to the local 24-hour coffee shop. I run into a guy I know over the internet; we sit and yak about some weird stuff he’s seen online. As we talk, my favourite English teacher in history walks by. He’s the one who taught the two queer-subtext-in-literature courses I took in CEGEP, the best English courses I ever took. I love him, he’s fabulous. He tells me he’s going to be teaching a course at my university in January. I promise to take it. I know it’ll be great. He gives me his email address so I can keep in touch.
> 
> I finish my coffee and say bye to the Internet guy, and go back in the club. It’s full now, and the DJ is whipping off one of my favourite songs after another. I love 80’s dance. I sashay into the middle of the dance floor, gyrate to the beat, lip-synch to the lyrics. I love this. I love moving my body like this. It’s a natural high. I can go crazy dancing and nobody notices because they’re all doing the same thing.
> 
> A little later on, I’m tired from my temporary exertion and the DJ has finished the little run of my favourites, so I sit down on the stairs and watch the crowd. As the beat pulses on, the twisting, jolting bodies and the flashes of the disco lights merge into an undulating mass. I stop hearing the music and seeing the individual people, and just feel myself in tune with the rhythms of everyone in the club. Their dance is my dance. It’s everyone’s dance.
> 
> The DJ plays the Pet Shop Boys number I requested earlier, and I slither back onto the floor. While I’m dancing, I see a guy in front of me. Very good looking he is, and from the way he’s looking at me I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. We smile at each other, and move closer together. We begin to bump up against each other as we dance. Soon we’re dirty dancing and it’s wonderful - I watch his muscles move under his tight t-shirt and I know something good’s going to happen.
> 
> It’s wearing down, so we dance to a few more songs and then saunter off the floor. Finally we tell each other our names. We get into a cab and head up to his place. He sits down on his bed and smiles suggestively up at me, and I sit down, feeling that thrilling mix of self-confidence, adrenaline, trepidation, and sheer horniness. I reach out my hand to him, lay it on his shoulder. He moves in against me. And things take their natural course.
> 
> They take their natural course so well, in fact, that they take it twice before we fall asleep. And once more when we wake up at noon the next morning.
> 
> Do I want to be straight?
> 
> No.
> 
> It’s nothing personal.

> [@](#):
>
> By the way, you should not use quotation marks unless you are quoting something. So:
> 
> Wrong: I would like to become “gay.”  
> Right: I would like to become gay.  
> Right: I would like to become “gay.”[sup]1 [/sup]  
> (1) Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: UCal, 1992.

> [@](#):
>
> This is going to sound a little snotty, but I don’t mean it like that. Just reporting the conclusions I’ve arrived at. YMMV.
> 
> I think I’m doing pretty well in the smarts department, if I may say so; one of the things that I think I’ve done that’s smart is decided to content myself with not much money. I don’t and hopefully will never want to own a house, car, or expensive entertainment shit.
> 
> Right now, I have very little money, but dammit, I’m living like a king. I have lots of food, a great little apartment that looks nice and contains everything I need; I’m well taken care of. There are some nice things I want that I don’t have, but that’s OK. I have some hefty (to my standards) cheques coming in this month for my translation work that’ll keep me in incense and Oreos for a good deal of time to come. I might even be able to go to Europe this autumn - on the cheap, of course.
> 
> My parents, on the other hand, have a house, a 34’ yacht, a cottage, etc, etc. They have taken two vacations so far this year, to the Bahamas and to Italy. Interestingly, for people so vastly much “better off” materially than I, they seem to spend more time worrying about money.
> 
> Forgive my naiveté, but is this one of the things that changes as you get older? I hope not. I like being happy with my 1 1/2 on the Plateau and a bus pass every month whether I need it or not.
> 
> I have a warm bed, a great apartment, a good amount of space, and basically everything I need and a great deal of what I want.

more of my earlier stuff to come…

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**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\
**Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shameless-self-promotion/30282/7 "2000-08-23T14:58:39Z")

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One more (just one, I promise)

> [@](#):
>
> Re art: It’s unbelievable, but the last time I was in Paris, I went to the Musee d’Orsay.
> 
> There are tourists there who have paid thousands of dollars and flown for seven hours to get to the queen city of Europe and are now standing in front of some of the most gorgeous and moving artworks in western civilization.
> 
> And they walk up to one, take a picture, and then walk away.
> 
> _deep breath_
> 
> \*\*\*LOOK AT THE FUCKING PICTURE! YOU ARE RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF IT! \*\*\*
> 
> Don’t go home and look at it in a bad 4 x 6 kodakolor reproduction!
> 
> \*\*\*LOOK AT IT NOW!!! \*\*\*
> 
> _deep breath_
> 
> Sorry. Please go on.
