a love story starring a pure-hearted nutjob of a male virgin

for example, when chatting with coworkers, i’ll often ask if they have any fun weekend plans. but let’s be real - we all feel like friendless losers when someone asks that question and we go “uhhhhh… no.” so instead, i phrase it as “so, do you have anything fun planned over the weekend, or are you just going to enjoy having some time to relax?”

phrased like this, there’s rarely any awkwardness. you’ve presented two options & given both equally positive connotations, so your conversational partner has an automatic “out,” so to speak

but it works for higher stakes conversations too!!!! my mom was saying this weekend how she and her neighbor both like walking around the neighborhood & that she wanted to suggest they take a walk together sometime, but was worried about how to approach the conversation

so i said “how about you just say ‘i’ve noticed we both like taking walks! would you be interested in going for one together, or do you use walks for some precious alone time?’”

now Walking Neighbor has an automatic “get out of jail free card” if she wants to say no!!!! which means my mom doesn’t have to worry about the conversation being uncomfortable, because she’s set it up to go smoothly

forgot to update with the thrilling conclusion of this story. here is a montage of ME, kitsch, at the 2025 world figure skating championships (you do have to turn your brightness up. and maybe zoom in.)

watch the world championships from march 25-29. a lot of competitors skip worlds after the olympics, but ilia malinin and alysa liu have said they will be there.

check out your local summer skating tours/shows. in the US and canada we have stars on ice (US link, canada link). if you live in an east asian country like japan or korea you should also have local ice shows. this will be your chance to see your faves perform live!

in the fall, watch the grand prix series, starting (usually) with skate america. these are 6 international competitions held in six of the major figure skating countries (USA, canada, france, japan, china, and finland). top six skaters from the GPs go to the grand prix final, which is lowkey the best competition of the year.

following the grand prix series every country holds their respective national championships, and then you have the european championships, four continents championships (basically for everyone but europe), and the world championships.

these competitions will be streamed by your local figure skating broadcaster (peacock in the US). you can also find them on the SkatingISU youtube channel, but it's geoblocked anywhere that already has a local broadcaster. you can use a paid VPN set to some random country in eastern europe, or a classic skating fan hack is to download the browser opera, enable the free VPN in the settings and set it to europe.

the full schedule for the season and detailed streaming info can be found on SYWTWFS. i highly recommend subscribing to their google calendar to get all figure skating events on your calendar in your own time zone!

if you want to make sure you won't miss your faves, you can check the start order, schedule, and live results HERE! (if you click "time schedule" you can see when each skater will compete).

like in increasing order of annoyance, you are simultaneously

unfunny

wrong

as always the human immune system is not beating the "overactive HOA that explodes the whole subdivision bc someone put up a basketball hoop in their driveway" allegations

I really hate that it can just be looking around and go "hmmm I don't like the cut of this guy's jib" and the guy is YOUR OWN BLOOD

I was also reminded recently about the eyes having "immune privilege" meaning your immune system isn't really supposed to Go There bc your eyeball tissue is so delicate that inflammation and higher temperatures would destroy the tissue. so your body is just like. "don't look over there. nothing to be concerned about. nothing to see here" about. your eyes. to prevent your immune system from EXPLODING THE SUBDIVISION

In fact, that's completely wrong. Our bodies did NOT evolve to endure anything remotely like the constant onslaught of viral pathogens that modern humans endure. It's the combination of few to no parasitic infections and far too many viral infections that increases the incidence of allergies and autoimmune conditions.

🗣🗣🗣 free youtube premiere of the national theatre the importance of being ernest announced!