Here’s another plea for Sampiro to post his coming out to his lady wrestler mom story. Please?
Dunno if you’re being an asshole or not, but dear God, Sampiro, that’s funny.
Thank you. I listened to a couple of audio clips. Based on those (admittedly a small sample), Sampiro’s funnier. 
While we’re talking about caustic and hilarious gay essayists with charming Southern accents, it would be remiss to leave out David Sedaris.
You won’t work on her with any project on Kurt Cobain, will you?
flash forward to two years from now
You know, you really need to be careful about talking about people pulling someone aside and warning them to be careful about talking about certain things around certain people around Sampiro. See, a couple of years back, anytime he mentioned a student project or an incident in his hometown’s history involving suicide or a gun related death, someone would pull him aside and tell him he needed to be careful about talking about suicide or guns around Cindy because her husband had blown his brains out two years earlier. Drove the poor little faggot absolutely batshit crazy. He spent a couple of weeks in the psych ward because of it.
Oh, you didn’t know Sampiro was gay?
Well, it’s a good thing I mentioned it, because he’s very sensitive about it, so you should probably be careful about talking about homosexuals around him. Oh, and you probably shouldn’t mention nervous breakdowns or mental illness or psychiatrists around him either…
Shh, here he comes…
What, you mean like, when I say “Niagara Falls”? 
Maybe you should buy her some books by Hunter S Thompson as a kind of peace offering.
What? Were you thinking Hemingway?
Hey, no need to go shooting your face off. I mean, your mouth off.
Pure unadulterated evil! I love it!
I now think that at some point, maybe 6 months ago, probably 22 months ago, someone did make an accidental reference to something suicide-related and Cindy DID go off squallin’.
There has to be a reason why the first person described her as being really sensitive about it, don’t you think?
And you know how we are. Southerners are perfectly comfortable with public melodrama, but outward displays of genuine emotion?
Shudder
Some of the women and all of the men in that dept would probably do whatever it took not to have an emotional mess on their hands again.
Just a theory.
I resent that terminology.
I am neither poor nor little but rather middle class and pleasantly plump.
Well, then, he’s screwed, because there’s a mental hospital smack on campus, with a big historic register sign out front. It’s hard to avoid. I drive past it at least once a week.
I probably shouldn’t have mentioned screwing either, should I?
It’s really odd- every city I’ve ever lived in had a major mental hospital. I wonder what I’m subconsciously trying to tell myself.
Of course I have a major family connection to the one in T-town. My great-grandfather had 12 surviving children and 9 at some point in their lives resided there. My grandmother (his daughter) kept Crisco cans strategically placed through her house because she thought toilets were non-hygienic and attended funerals of people she’d never met to get free meals (sometimes calling the house of the deceased to get a menu first) and she was one of the “sane” ones.
Mm, crazy Southern relatives. Got some of those myself.
(hijack: Now that I know you work at the university, I have scenarios running through my mind where I make some board-related comment in class and my professor has like, a heart attack.)
Well yes, but don’t kill yourself over it.
Rysler, maybe my radio is broken but I never thought David Sedaris sounded at all southern. I’ll try to catch one of his live shows when I can.
He doesn’t have a Southern accent, but he is from North Carolina and can fake it when appropriate. He talks about this in, I think it’s Me Talk Pretty One Day, how his parents would have a fit if any of the kids started adopting Southernisms (they’re originally from New York), but they’d loosened up by the time his youngest brother was born that he has a strong North Carolina accent.
How his family still talks to him after he’s told all their stories on national radio is beyond me.
When they act like they’re getting upset, he just points to Amy! 
:smack: I never made the connection between David and Amy and yes I was a Strangers with Candy fan and often listened to David on This American Life.