Archive for the ‘Language’ Category

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: How We Got from Grief to Pancakes Subject: A woman finds a […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Gail Collins/The Uncle Al Election The Short Version: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are politicians; ergo they act like politicians. In her words: “There isn’t a right or wrong to this argument — only strategy.” Score: A- (Aware) Although we’re not always in […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Paul Krugman/Taming the Beast The Short Version: We need financial reform. So far none of the candidates seem to have noticed. In his words: “But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank… to […]


In which The Gay Recluse celebrates Easter. It was not until eleventh grade — in Mrs. S____’s English class — that we began to appreciate the obsessive and illogical side of literature, which of course is to say we were reading Wuthering Heights. Do you remember Mrs. S____? How thin and small and severe she […]


In which The Gay Recluse makes a clarification. Reader Gary Budlong (apparently new to The Gay Recluse) wrote the following comment in response to our most recent “mash-up” of the Modern Love column in The Times. dear pete, thank you. i’m 61, disabled, retired and gay. my partner has died 5 years ago. knew i […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Mom, It’s Me, Your Gay Son, Finally By PETE MacDONALD and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 22, 2008 A YEAR after my partner Alan left me, and on the day before my estranged mother would have turned […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Nicholas Kristof/Obama and Race The Short Version: Obama gave a great speech the other day. In his words: “Much of the time, blacks have a pretty good sense of what whites think, but whites are oblivious to common black perspectives.” Score: B- (Boring) […]


In which The Gay Recluse kills two birds with one stone. Today we received a certain amount of shit for “trashing” Arthur C. Clarke as a major closet-case only milliseconds after he died. Fair enough, we trashed him a little. But our purpose in doing so — besides being an internet traffic whore, of course […]


In which The Gay Recluse breathes a sigh of relief and encourages everyone to buy a book. Recently we read The Gay Uncle’s Guide To Parenting by Brett Berk and learned that the world is filled with these strange creatures called “children,” which — somewhat alarmingly — are the by-product and responsibility of an even […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: The Steep Price of Our Forbidden Kiss Subject: A young woman with […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. (Note: For Kayla’s response, please click here.) By KAYLA RACHLIN SMALL and THE GAY RECLUSE THE rules forbade me from being within three feet of her. I knew those rules; she knew them. Sharing a drink meant […]


In which The Gay Recluse would laugh at government doublespeak (and the media’s reporting of the same) if it were in a novel instead of the real world. Today Jeff Weinstein sent us the following quote from an article in The Times (of London) about the British government’s decision to reopen the asylum case of […]


In which The Gay Recluse weighs in on a “controversy.” Obviously, when we endorsed Geraldine Ferraro for president, it was with the expectation that she would hover benovolently in the past and not say unthinking things like: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: A Signal in the Sky Said: Marry Her Subject: A goofball straight […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides an alternative to this week’s more tedious and stereotypical Modern Love offering in The Times. By Ben Karlin and The Gay Recluse THE problem was Paolo. I met him at an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he was a devastatingly cute waiter and I a frequent […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders a sampling of recent search terms used to find the very pages you are now reading. Note: All search terms listed are in the exact form provided by WordPress.com, which is the host (at least for a while) of this blog. Hyperlinks to relevant posts included. Search: students ‘shallow […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: An April Fools’ Joke I Played on Myself Subject: A frat boy […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders a sampling of recent search terms used to find the very pages you are now reading. Note: All search terms listed are in the exact form provided by WordPress.com, which is the host (at least for a while) of this blog. Hyperlinks to relevant posts included. Search: two headed […]


In which The Gay Recluse celebrates The New Dark Ages. Last night Gawker posted a piece about Chris Crocker, who has released a new video in which he responds to YouTube comments such as the following: –Next time you are walking in the street I hope you get run over by cancer –I WANNA KILL […]


In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship. This week’s piece: A Valley of Misery Between Peaks of Joy Subject: In this column […]