Friday, March 16, 2012

Happy Paddy's Day Trooper York

Trooper York said...

I am glad I don't go out anymore on St Paddy's day. I am retired. From Accounting. From real partying. From drinking more beer than a college fraternity in one Friday night.

So St Paddy's day is one where the wife and I stay home and have a nice home cooked dinner and a couple of bottles of wine.

Just enough to drive the snakes out of my head.

73 comments:

ricpic said...

Picture change! Fifteen yards for picture change!

windbag said...

That cup is strategically placed.

Trooper York said...

Same photo just made it smaller to get the keg in the picture.

rcommal said...

Enjoy your St. Patrick's Day, Trooper, and everyone!

I'm hoping we're going to go see a local band (two members of which are fathers in families in a homeschool group we've been connected with for a few years) tomorrow afternoon, which is a kid-friendly event while still allowing parents to enjoy themselves. Tomorrow night I'm cooking Irish, non-veg and veg, and then we'll just hang out together.

However you all celebrate, part-Irish, Irish or Irish by holiday adoption, I hope it's special. Even if you don't, I hope you have a mighty fine Saturday.

Anonymous said...

Happy St. Paddy's Day!

Titus said...

Do you guys know a large percentage of Boston has been in a black out since Tuesday?

Thank God it didn't hit Cambridge.

Cambridge is like a walk over a small bridge from Boston but I hardly ever go over there.

I am a Cantabridgian.

Cambridge's mayor is a black lesbian of course. Before her the mayor was a black gay guy natch.

I lived in Boston for years, South End, Dorchester, Southie, Jamaica Plain, Brighton and North End, but now I am totally Cambridge.

tits.

South Boston Patty's Day parade is huge by the way. My first year living in Boston, some fag Irish group asked to be admitted to the parade, and it was a mess. I went to the parade that year and was mortified. The fags were surrounded by police baracades and a bus directly behind them. Of course, they were slammed with beers and smears and it was horrible-I may have thrown a beer at them too just so no one thought I was a fag-is that bad? Of course some of the fags were wearing kilts because they were Irish and for some reason at that time in fag fashion kilts were hot-5 years later straighty guys were wearing them natch, because the gay are all pioneer men and all.

As soon as the parade ended the gays ran onto the buses and the buses flew out of Southie being trailed by a bunch of drunk Irish guys.

That was like 20 years ago and now Southie has turned really gay. All those Ben Afleck and Matt Damon movies about Southie? That was southie of a long time ago. The Irish trash has essentially been priced out and now it is is yuppie city. The fags priced out of The South End have set up shop in Southie. Long live southie. I guess you could say I was a trailblazer because I was there, not marching, and perhaps sneering, but there. If there is ever a plaque there you will likely see the name Titus.

The L Street Gym is still there-I had some great down low married hog in the steam room there.

Happy Paddy's Day.

Guinness.

Tits.

MamaM said...

Tell me, me oh me oh my,
Wasn't that a party?


Enough on the buffet and in the cooler for everyone to have a snootful of something.

While I think I'd like to know what words or thoughts the TY uses for picture search and selection, I have the uneasy feeling the recipe involves ingredients and a process I'd be better off not knowing, similar to the making of blood sausage.

chickelit said...

Trooper, you're such a good shanachie--Happy St. Paddy's Day to you!

Titus said...

I am going to Harvard Square today. It is only one block from my expensive loft but I don't go there much.

For St. Paddy's Day they are having "cupcakes on the square and outdoor yoga classes".

No cupcakes for me but I may assume the downward facing dog position....if I am in the mood.

tits.

cabbage.

Titus said...

I just found out it is "farm on the square" today. We can pet, ride and eat farm animals.

We city folks will learn about "farm to table".

I am so excited.

I will pet a horse, ride a hog and eat a chicken.

Yeaaaaaa

Chip S. said...

Not in front of the kids, mmmkay?

Michael Haz said...

Happy St. Patrick's Day one and all!

Mrs. Haz' car needed new tires so we went to the tire store at 9:00. The tire guy said her car'd be ready at 11:00 so we got in my car and went....to a pub for *cough cough* breakfast.

The pub is s pretty nice place. It opened just before Christmas in a former family restaurant. The new owners must have spent a couple million bucks renovating the place, expanding it and making it look and feel like a true Irish pub, except that it has windows.

The place was already crowded when we got there. We sat at the bar, had a couple of *cups of coffee* and hit the brunch line. Doggone good food.

Most of the parking lot is taken up by a huge tent with its own bar and a stage for a band this afternoon and tonight.

All-in-all it was a slice of what's great about America: An "Irish" bar owned by enterprising Greeks who employ a kitchen staff of Mexicans so mostly German people can celebrate an "Irish" holiday that was actually invented in New York.

By the way, the world's largest Irish festival is held right here in Milwaukee every summer.

We went back to the tire place to pick up the car, then went home to take a mid-day nap. My partying skills aren't what they once were.

I might go out for a pint later on, or I might not. Depends on how badly I want to be in the midst of screaming drunks.

May the roof above you never fall in, and those gathered beneath it never fall out.

AllenS said...

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

Nine-El said...
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Nine-El said...
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TTBurnett said...
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TTBurnett said...

Titus' picture of Southie is spot on. I've been here 32 years, and the yuppification of many areas of Boston that used to be white trash havens is amazing.

The Irish who have managed to hang on tend to be middle-class two-toilet Irish (my people, but we're from California) of the sort who used to migrate over the river to places like Quincy to get out of Southie. Getting away from gangs, a welfare culture and general scumbaggery is a good idea if you don't want your kids to be involved with gangs, on welfare, and becoming general scumbags.

If they stayed, however, families eventually found themselves in improving neighborhoods with all the conveniences of being in the city. West Roxbury was another decent place where middle-class Irish always went. It's closer-in, and maybe a little more downscale, on average, than Quincy. But many tacky neighborhoods have otherwise really come up in the last 20+ years.

A lot of kids in the Catholic school in Cambridge where I teach part-time are Boston Irish who have grown up in spiffed-up houses or even nice triple-deckers with Lexuses and BMW's parked out front on clean streets lined with flower boxes and neatly-trimmed trees. 30 years ago, many of these places were scary dumps.

I can hardly believe I'm teaching Irish kids from Boston who have little or no noticeable accent, and who are driven to school every day in, say, mom's Volvo. Welcome to middle-class life pretty much anywhere.

All this looks like a Europeanization process, where the cities are expensive and limit the worst elements that way. You could say this means a lost culture with the influx of yuppie scum, etc., but, frankly, the old Boston Irish white trash culture was so bad, I'm not in the slightest way sad to see it erased from the face of the Earth.

Erin go bragh.

blake said...

Oh, he doesn't smell like Irish Spring
And he never taught me anything
But still I slap my chest and sing
Of My Drunken Irish Dad.

Oh, his face looks like a railroad map
And he never shuts his freakin' trap
But all the ladies catch the clap
From your Drunken Irish Dad

Ask a Hennessey, Tennessey, Morrison,
Shaughnessy, Reardon, and Rooney
They'll tell you the same
McNulty, Mulrooney, and Connor and Clooney
All feel the same mixture of pride and of shame.

Finnegan, Hannigan, Kelly, and Flanagan
Look to the ground while their dad passes by
Cafferty, Rafferty, Joyce and O'Lafferty
Fight for his honor and then start to cry!

Oh, we Irish lads are all infirm,
And our moods infect us like a germ
'Cause we're all the spawn of a pickled sperm...

And we don't tan well either.

From a Drunken Irish Dad!!!

rcommal said...

That is outstanding, Blake!

ndspinelli said...

Happy St. Pat's to all. Trooper, I can abide wine w/ dinner today..or any day. But, for chrissake, today you have to have a couple Bushmills before dinner!

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Happy St Patrick's.

First time I heard this song was when I was in Ireland in the early 1970's. Sung by a blind performer in a bar in Limerick.

The melancoly side of the Irish.

I temporarily sand and played with a group in SF in the Abbey Tavern and some other Irish bars in the area. This song was a favorite.

There was a Irish merchant sailor who would demand that we play this song OVER AND OVER.

He would yell out as he became ever more drunk "Play Johnson's SHAGGIN' Motor Car!!!!."

Good news was he would tip us $50 to play it. This was in 1969!!

Nothing like a drunken Irish sailor!!

:-D

TTBurnett said...

St. Paddy's Day being about drunks, I thought I'd pass along some of the inside skinny on the fistfight that erupted last week at a Chicago Symphony concert. Unclear if either antagonist was of the Hibernian persuasion, but alcohol was definitely involved.

Who says Classical fans are a bunch of stiffs?

Next up for Symphony Hall: a mosh pit.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Well, the metronome would definitely put me over the top too!!

Sounds justified.

LOL

TTBurnett said...

I wonder whether alcohol or Twitter kills more brain cells.

TTBurnett said...

You might regrow them listening to Brahms, but SEVEN martinis? (if I understand it right)

TTBurnett said...

A metronome is bad enough, but what about the people with an electronic tuner iPhone app? "What??! They're playing that at A445!"

That's when I'd lower the boom.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Dyeing the Chicago River Green.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Comic hero of the day...

TTBurnett said...

This having been the Day of the Drunk, tomorrow I need to go to Church. Pray for me.

I'm feeling really, really bad just now with flu and NOT with a hangover, dammit. Hope I'm better in the morning. I need to go the St Paul's on Sundays as part of my job. I usually wrangle the 8th grade changed voice boys who can't sing any more, but act as ushers or Altar Servers. Fr. Savage appropriated 4 of 'em to serve as Torch Bearers, thus filling out the ranks of Servers impressively, but leaving me with basically no ushers.

It's a pain in the ass to constantly remind 8th graders to take their hands out of their pockets, to stand there, to genuflect and cross yourself not like you're swatting flies, etc., etc., so I'm not really complaining. Instead, Fr. Savage now wants me in the Sacristy to keep order among the new mob of Servers.

Pray for me.

Titus said...

Fellow republicans, as I have told you, I live in an urban area. There are peeps milling about at all hours.

Right now, in the alley below my Penthouse Loft a straighty couple is fucking and I am mortified yet interested.

It has been going on for over 45 minutes now and I have barely left my huge floor length windows.

The woman is ravenous and it is something that I am trying to digest. My perception, as a fag, is that the woman may be more passive during sex. Yes, I have watched straight porn but those women are sluts and prostitutes. This woman is free and mounting this man to high heaven and yelling harder! I am in a state of shock, bewilderment and a little unsettled. I didn't know women could be so aggressive and hard core. Because it is warm out the women is just wearing a green necklace and green hat. The guys pants are around his ankles and his shirt is on-take off your shirt Mary so if I can see if you at least have decent pecs.

All of this is happening standing up. There are huge trash bins right by them why not jump in and take a load off?

Anywhoo, I am contemplating taking the rare clumber out for a "walk" and happenstance upon this horny couple.

The woman looks kind of hot. The man is just ok.

Happy St. Patty's.

tits.

blake said...

r,,

Can't claim credit for it. It's from "Family Guy".

blake said...

Titus should consider a career as an anthropologist.

Titus said...

I am watching The Birds, starring Tippy Hedron and the straighty's fucking below my window-they are still going at it-1 hour and counting. I am surprised it is lasting this long. Currently, she is on her knees and blowing him.

I am in bliss.

Tippy's hair is so fab and she is so beautiful. I want to go to Botega Bay and also would be interested in getting a closer look at the sluts beave below me-it looks totally Brazil, from by standpoint.

Oh and go Marquette and Wisconsin, congrats on Sweet 16.

Titus said...

What I want to know in this movie is how a city girl wearing a mink knows how to drive a motor boat. Tippy is fierce. OMG, she got got clipped by a gull, I believe the man she is after is a republican in real life-thank god!

Right now the straighty's below me are taking a cig break and the women is digging in her cooch. Oh no, she just smelt her finger-I have to get down there.

Lots of visual stimuli to keep track of right now.

Would I be ok on the farm? Bald eagles, straighty's doing it-which would interest me more?

Titus said...

Jessica Tandy-as the mother in The Birds, tour de force.

She is suspicious and hates Tip. Reminds me of my mother with my UK Indian husband-my mom hates him-because he takes time away from her-she loves me more than anything and anyone in the world. She detestes my sisters and loves me-I like that. And she tells me daily.

tits.

Chip S. said...

Whew, I'm exhausted.

At the last minute I decided to fly to Boston for St. Paddy's Day. Met some crazy chick in a bar near Harvard Square. We got super-drunk, and she dragged me into some alley, took off everything except her stupid green hat and necklace, and insisted that I bang her silly.

Practically an hour of her screaming like a fuckin' banshee till I finally got to take a break for a smoke. Then we noticed some creep watching us thru his floor-to-ceiling windows. Freaked us out at first, but then we figure ah, what the hell. To each his own.

What's been goin' on here? I haven't had a chance to read any of the comments yet.

windbag said...

Just got off the phone with my cousin. He's a pre-op tranny. He was in Boston for St. Patty's Day and decided to have a little fun. He went to a bar near Harvard Square and picked up the first guy he met. Took him to an alley and rode him like a racehorse.

You can't pick your family, eh?

Chip S. said...

I remember a couple two dumpsters over who both had strangely deep voices.

Small world!

MamaM said...

The Curious Incident of the Hog in the Night.

windbag said...

Small world!

That's what she said.

Chip S. said...

A night to remember. Titanic, really.

Anonymous said...

I just boarded the plane back to Milwaukee from Boston, had a great time in a place called Harvard Square with a complete stranger, I'm so ashamed and a bit sore. Hope he didn't have an STD, plus some old creepy guy wearing a sarong was watching the whole time from his window. I'm too old for this. Never again will I drink green beer.

So how was everyones St. Paddy's day?

Anonymous said...

OMG, I just read this thread, thank God, it was the tranny and not me, I could never face Chip again, that would've been just too embarrassing.

Anonymous said...

Darcy told me she was going to Boston for the weekend.....

For some authentic corned beef and cabbage, she bought new tight jeans just for the occasion, nah, she would never......

TTBurnett said...

Wow. I'm worried about Mass going smoothly today at St Paul's in Harvard Sq., and Titus gets a midnight eyeful a few short blocks away.

Having been around the place for some years now, I'd say there is precious little back-alley fucking in Harvard Sq. itself. The alleys are not that hidden; there are too many cops, both Harvard U. and Cambridge; the people are, for a variety of reasons—mostly PC ones—fairly uptight; and, anyway, that's why students have dorm rooms.

OTOH, go a few blocks up Mass Ave. toward Central Sq. where Titus is, and the area is less well-patrolled; there are more dark and unobservable alleys, and, most importantly for al fresco trysts, there are bars. Harvard Sq. itself doesn't have a proper, stand-alone bar unconnected to a restaurant. But you can easily get pie-eyed three or four blocks away. I think Cambridge cops consider they have more important things to do than worry about drunken fucking in some back alley off Mass Ave. But the powers that be seem to want to preserve the sacred precincts of Harvard itself from such low-rent activities.

TTBurnett said...

Well, feeling like bleep, I'm off to ride herd on Altar Servers at St. Paul's.

The things that go on in Harvard Sq.

TTBurnett said...

Well, here I am at Church, coughing, barely able to stand up and shedding gallons of mucous. It's going to be charming during Mass. I have to wait a bit before the 8th grade shows up, so you're getting this while I have nothing better to do than try to decide whether I have enough energy to make it over to Dunkin Donuts.

I think between Titus and me, you're getting a bit of Boston local color. Boston used to have a LOT more local color before it got gentrified and multi-cultural. In fact, it was the most colorful place I had ever been, or could even imagine. My wife, who has lived all over the world, says that Boston used to be the most "colorful" place she had ever been, as well. Now, it's begun to resemble everywhere else.

Larry DiCara, who used to be President of the Boston City Council, was on the Governor's Council, I believe, and has been a general political hack for as long as I can remember was talking on the radio the other day. He said the old Boston is over. Nobody cares who your grandfather was any more, or which Parish he was baptized in. There are lots of minorities and gays spread throughout the whole city, a normal situation in most larger urban areas, but was unheard of 30 years ago, when Boston was the last lilly-white city in the U.S. It's not Brotherhood Week by any means, but the near anti-gay riot described by Titus seems bizarre to my kids.

The world of "Mystic River" may make for a gripping movie, but the reality has become a lot more middle-class and boring.

I like middle-class and boring.

windbag said...

...I'd say there is precious little back-alley fucking in Harvard Sq.

I noticed the few times I was in Boston that public urination seemed to be acceptable behavior, especially around Wonderland. Didn't see any public copulation, though.

Anonymous said...

In reality, I spent a lovely day in Chicago, with a very nice Irish man, I previously turned my nose up at because he was an inch shorter than I. His daughter made corned beef and cabbage, mashed potatoes, simple but delicious. A lovely Irish family, I may have to learn to cook Irish, what do they eat besides potatoes?

chickelit said...

In reality, I spent a lovely day in Chicago, with a very nice Irish man, I previously turned my nose up at because he was an inch shorter than I.

Perhaps his endowment compensates his stature.

chickelit said...

"Shanachie" really does describe TY well in so far as they're big believers in oral traditions.

ndspinelli said...

Allie, Being half Irish I can repeat my old man's line. "The Irish make great whiskey. Their diet is predicated on being bland so they don't throw up that great whiskey when they down a whole bottle of it."

Or, my old man would say, "You hear people say, I feel like Italian, Chinese, German,etc. tonight. Have you ever heard anyone say..I feel like Irish today, except on St. Pats Day?"

They also eat bangers and mash..bland sausage w/ spuds. Lamb stew..not bad. Irish soda bread is nice w/ tea in the morning..that's all she wrote!! I love the Irish side of my fam and they would agree w/ this. only the bullshitting Irish would disagree, and that's a very large percentage!

Anonymous said...

Nick, uh oh Hungarian sausage might be a bit spicy for him. Oh well, I'll cook some bland German dish and a kuchen for dessert.

Chip S. said...

Allie, I've got a hunch that if you two hit it off outside the kitchen he won't care about the food.

At least not for 6 months or so.

Anonymous said...

Isn't the way to a man's heart through his stomach anymore? Well, I didn't know how to boil water when I met my husband, you may be right. He's a Chicago Democrat, his last name is very well known in Chicago, but he's not related to them.

After 6 months I may have to get really creative.

TTBurnett said...

...public urination seemed to be acceptable behavior, especially around Wonderland

Ah, well Wonderland dog track has closed. Part of the same gentrification and corporatization I was talking about. And, anyway, it was hard by Revere, Boston's Jersey Shore.

There seems to be a distinct Italian low-rent flavor to a lot of the waterside real estate from Boston northward. From Revere ("Reveah") up through parts of the North Shore ("Naath Shoah"), which Titus has talked about, my image of the typical inhabitants includes Guidos in gold chains and mullets, and Guidettes with Big Hair, driving red Mazda Miata convertables home to Swampscott on 128, drying their fingernail polish by waving their hand in the slipstream above the windshield. I realize these stereotypes are 20 years old, but from what Titus has said, and my own observation, the updated versions are alive and well.

The older generation would frequent places like Wonderland. But, as things developed, nobody under, say, 45 would be caught dead in such a dump, so it closed.

Another nail in the coffin of Boston's white trash culture.

Chip S. said...

More likely the closing of a dog track in Boston is part of the nationwide decline in dog racing. Some will argue that it's due to greater concerns about the treatment of the dogs, but my hunch is that most tracks have been made irrelevant by the advent of all kinds of legalized off-track betting.

TTBurnett said...

From Titus and me, I hope all you Midwesterners are getting a better feel for life in Boston.

For those who discount anything Titus writes as hyperbole, from what I've seen, quite a few of his descriptions and stories are accurate and nothing to dismiss out of hand, so to speak.

TTBurnett said...

You're right about that, Chip. As I say, nobody under 45 would get anywhere near it. There are too many other venues for gambling, not to mention the fact that Massachusetts has recently allowed the usual Indian and other casino development, which generally result in much more upscale venues.

What's a poor person to do who wants to put a few bucks on the doggies?

"Go die" is the answer in Massachusetts.

chickelit said...

He's a Chicago Democrat, his last name is very well known in Chicago, but he's not related to them.

You wouldn't be putting on ayers, would you?

chickelit said...

TTBurnett said...
From Titus and me, I hope all you Midwesterners are getting a better feel for life in Boston.

I visited Boston twice last year on business and enjoyed it very well. My Christmas weekend walk through a mild snowstorm which I live tweeted was unforgettable. I walked from the downtown to Fenway Park and then over to Haavard square, then to the Chem department to look for the ghost of R.B. Woodward. I ended up in a small little dive cafe.

Anonymous said...

No , I'm just a down home Wisconsin girl, no Ayers for me.

I'm off to another Barbeque, spring fever has hit Wisconsin, in the 70's again today!! This time the host and hostess are good ol' Wisconsinites, brats and Micro brew , no doubt.

The trees are getting buds already!

Anonymous said...

TTB, Boston sounds kind of scary, even worse than Chicago.

TTBurnett said...

Allie: Actually the places most people would go in the Boston area are quite safe. Downtown, the Back Bay, Copley, the area around Symphony Hall, Fenway Park, the Fenway itself (near the Museum of Fine Arts), and Harvard Square in Cambridge are all quite okay to walk around in most times of the day and night. These places are all roughly comparable to Wrigleyville and other nice enclaves in Chicago: pleasant urban environments with restaurants and lots of things to do and see, not to mention, in one case, a great, historical ball park (you'll never get in, because it's always sold out, and the tickets go for a zillion dollars, dammit).

Like Chicago, or any other city, there are dodgy areas. But they've gotten much smaller over the years, and visitors and tourists would never have had reason to visit them anyway. Boston is confusing, tangled, hard to drive around in (it's a 17th century city after all), with some of the worst traffic on the planet. But it's also a great place to visit and explore, with some of the most fascinating and unique things to see and do.

I know what Trooper's going to say. He wants every place to be exactly like New York. Of course no two cities are the same, so it's totally expected he'll say "Boston Sucks!!!!" Reminds me of Uncle Matthew, I believe, in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. He doesn't like the Continent, because it's not just like Home, and says, "I've been abroad, and it's a terrible place."

No, Boston is not New York or anyplace else, and some of us regard that as a perfectly fine thing.

blake said...

I spent the weekend sleeping in a dumpster in Boston.

People are gross.

windbag said...

I liked Wonderland. I guess it's been close to 20 years since I was there. Dog racing seems to me to be the hardest to cheat at, so it holds a bigger draw for me than the horse track or the jai alai fronton. People can throw a race or a game, but unless you drug a dog, it seems to be the levelest playing field. Maybe I'm just naive.

Anonymous said...

80 degrees today! More steak at this barbeque, actually was hungry for brats, but I won't refuse steak. My neighbors are putting out their piers already. Mine will come out next weekend, what this warm weather this early does to us Midwesterners is amazing, you never saw so many white pasty legs and happy beer drinkers.

Titus said...

Allie, do you live on a lake?

If so, that would be so nice.

tits.

Anonymous said...

Yes Titus I do, look up lakes in Waukesha County, then guess which one I live on.

The Dude said...

It's time for Troop to sober up, put his shoes on and get back to work.

chickelit said...

Lake Titicaca is a portmanteau word of Titus' favorites.

caca

Titus said...

Allie, even though I was from around Madison, I don't know anything about Waukesha County or Milwaukee.

I went to a few fag bars in Milwaukee when I was like 15 and knew I had to bolt the state for hotter hog, so I don't know much about that area.

Did you say you lived in Oconomowoc? Is that Waukesha County? I don't know the difference between Waukesha and Wauwatosa and West Allis and West Bend. Although, I have been to Shorewood and that is a cutesy little hamlet.

I went to the gay bar where Jeffrey Dahlmer stocked his prey-kind of freaks me out. I think it was called Ce La Vie-how gay. Another one was called La Cage-again so gay. They were in the sketchy hoods. When I moved to Boston the fag bars were across from Fenway. You would have a line getting into Fenway and a line getting into the fag clubs-no one would ever yell out any shit-I was home. Also, the fags were on all roids and would kick your ass. The Milwaukee fags were awful. Milwaukee kind of scares me.
tits.

Anonymous said...

Titus, no I didn't say I lived in Oconomowoc, but I don't live far from there and yes it is in Waukesha County.

I was at some gay bar in Milwaukee many years ago, and met a very nice lesbian. Later when I became pregnant with m second daughter I named her after that amazingly beautiful lesbian. And no I am not a lesbian or bisexual, not hat there is anything wrong with that. We are all God's children, no?