All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

1/22/2014

Breakfast at the Truck Stop

In my town there are three hole in the wall places that pass for "the local diner".  My favorite is the one closest to my house, but all three are basically the same.  You get a decent breakfast or lunch for a fair price and you get to see the same group of regulars when you go there.  Personally I mostly go for a late breakfast, but I like the hamburgers too. 

Most towns have one or more diners or liars club or truck stop.  In big cities you have the mostly Greek but sometimes Italian owned Coney Islands.  Anyway its the same idea no matter what the place is called or how big of a city you are in.  Most of these restaurants have 8 to 12 items on the breakfast menu and they run specials.  If you are a regular the cook will make you anything you ask for provided he has the items on hand.

My observation over the years, both as a cook and as a loyal customer is that while you can (with in reason) have whatever you want specially made for you, or you can pick from a dozen or so menu items, most guys will either 1. go with the daily special or 2. pick from a rotation of two or three favorites. 

As much as I love biscuits and gravy my guy can't cook them worth a crap.  So I always skip those.  The breakfast burrito, the chicken fried steak, and steak and eggs are my rotation.  Even with that rotation it comes down to either the burrito or a chicken fry about 90% of the time.  Every waitress in the place knows my name, my wife's name, the dog's name etc.  I've walked in and overheard them betting about what I'll order.  So I'm not offended if I walk in and Hope places a steaming hot chicken fry, eggs over easy, wheat toast & grape jelly with extra crispy hash browns in front of me before I have a chance to order. 

Question.  Did I have a choice about what I was going to eat for breakfast?  Of course I did.  Why would the waitress pick my breakfast for me?  First, because she knows after years of brining it to me exactly what I want.  Second, she knew that the special that day was $2 off for one of my favorites.   People make predictable choices about what they like and what they want all the time, but its still a choice.  It may be a habit, but it is a choice.  I could have surprised everyone and asked for oatmeal.

People make choices.  We make them about breakfast and we make them about who we are attracted to sexually.  After awhile our choices become habit.  Like it or not people categorize, remember us, and label us by our habits.  In the diner a man may be known as a trucker special with coffee and sugar.  Is there more to that person than his order?  Of course, but that is how he is going to be known.  The waitress is going to have his coffee poured and give him extra sugar packets right off the bat, and the cook is going to start the pancakes as soon as he sees him. 

Nobody is offended by any of that.

When it comes to homosexuality somehow we are supposed to pretend that things are different.  We are expected to believe a person who is rational and able to make thousands of other decisions based on his own individual standards somehow loses that ability when it comes to sex.  What you find sexually attractive is what you find attractive.  There isn't necessarily a reason for it, it just happens to be what you enjoy.  Fine.  Do what you want to do.  Keep it private and I'll have no reason to know or care what you are doing.

When you decide that not only do you want to do what you want, but you want people who don't do the same thing as you to approve and affirm what you are doing, you cross a very important line.  Gay is not the new black.  Gay is not a legitimate civil rights issue.  Gay's do not have a right to ruin a mans life because he describes himself as "pro-vagina".  You don't have a right to destroy people who don't want to bake you a wedding cake.  I don't care what the judge says.  Is there suddenly a shortage of gays working as wedding planners?  Seriously, I've never met a straight wedding planner, ever.  You can't tell me that one Christian baker is the only ones making wedding cakes. 

The reason Putin is popular with just about everyone who isn't gay or in the media or a democrat, but I repeat myself, is that the rest of us are sick to death about hearing how you get off doing it with members of your own sex.  Keep it private and we don't care that much.  Shove it in our face and expect us to approve and congratulate you and we get resentful.  Try recruiting our children to your lifestyle and we become protective.  Leave us alone and we will leave you alone.

13 comments:

  1. Giraffe10:11 AM

    I agree, sort of.

    It wasn't that long ago and sodomy was illegal and homosexuality was considered a mental disease.

    In other words, government was used against them. Now they want to use it against us.

    It would be better for all concerned if government wasn't used as a weapon for people you disagree with. I suppose that is just wishful thinking, as it has always been that way and probably always will be.

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  2. "It wasn't that long ago and sodomy was illegal and homosexuality was considered a mental disease."

    The illegal aspect was changed by judicial fiat. The delisting of homosexuality from the APA-DSM was a simple matter of enough gays getting into the APA and "voting it off the island". No science occurred to reverse the diagnosis. No democratic debate occurred to review the legal status. Americans generally believe in a principle of letting people live their own life as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else. Which is why there hasn't been much of a fuss made about gays being gay.

    There is no reason why 3% (or less) of the population should think that they can control the other 97% of the group to get what they want. We are willing to leave them alone and stay out of their lifestyle. We just want the same consideration.

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  3. WaterBoy2:37 PM

    I try not to think too much about gays and truck stops. It makes long-distance trips a little less enjoyable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. homophobe!

    At least its not at the Y M C A or worse in the navy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Susan4:25 PM

    If a bunch of brave and well known bloggers(breitbart, Twitchy) really wanted to make trouble, they could spend a week or two talking about all the side issues of being gay.

    For instance, gay bowel syndrome. I hear that one is a doozy.

    The gays really don't like it when they really bad things about being gay come out into the sunshine.

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  6. Susan4:29 PM

    You can't change public policy by using a bakery among your own community. You have to go into a community that opposes your lifestyle, and bring the law down upon them for refusing to participate in your behavior. Even if said refusal is for religious reasons.

    So they will target the businesses of the straight community, people who have never done them any harm at all.

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  7. Anonymous7:30 PM

    Res you're the homophobe!

    Gay's are that way genetically, they can't help it. It's a proven fact. This is hate!

    ReplyDelete
  8. What's hateful?

    I think gays make their own decisions about the who what when etc of their own lives. I don't think they are mindless animals that can't control what they want or do. That's not hateful that's seeing them on the same plain as everyone else. I don't want to hear about what they do. I don't want them dictating policy just because it affirms them. Have the lifestyle you want, leave the rest of us out of it. My straight friends don't tell me about their sex life.

    Off topic but pick a handle. You can say almost anything you want here but man up and choose an identity.

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  9. Susan8:07 AM

    Anon

    If what you are saying was true, gays would be out in force against abortion. Because it would finally be possible to selectively abort babies based on genetics.

    And I can name several examples of people who chose to "become gay". The most recent is the NYC mayor's wife. She is a former lesbian. She says that about herself by the way. And then there are the ex-wife of actor Lou Diamond Phillips who left him for Melissa Etheridge, and Anne Heche who was involved with Ellen DeGeneres for quite a while. She left that lifestyle and is now happily married to a man and has kids.
    It is a lifestyle, a choice that people make. Leave us out of it please.

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  10. Those are good points Susan.

    I believe in a formal moral law. Our society doesn't accept that law, and its not likely we will again. However, as a society we universally accepted the idea of "to each his own" as long as it didn't bother anyone else.

    In politics the pendulum swings both ways. Right now its gone too far to the pro gay side and gays feel like they can persecute people who don't agree with them. How would they feel if the pendulum swung back the other way and they were on the persecution side of the trend. That's what is happening in some African nations now. Expect they aren't suing gays, they are putting them in prison and executing them.

    If you push something to hard somebody is going to push back harder. Quit bothering the straight community with every transgender queer cause du jour. Don't ask our jr high girls to shower and share bathrooms with your boy/girl.

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  11. Anonymous5:35 PM

    "putting them in prison and executing them."

    HATE! IT PROVES WHAT I SAID.

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  12. Susan7:58 PM

    Anon,

    It proves nothing of the sort. What it does tell us is that these nations don't want the "infection" of that BEHAVIOR rotting the social structure of their Countries. It has nothing to do with the people involved, it is their behavior. Two totally different things Anon.

    Liberalism rots and destroys every society it is allowed to flourish in.

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  13. Anon,

    Pick a handle. I don't care what it is.

    It's not hate to say that something is the way it is. I didn't say they should be doing those things, I said they are. That's what known as a statement of fact. I don't know what criteria they based that decision on. I suspect it is because of societal/religious reasons and part of an effort to eliminate AIDS.

    ReplyDelete