Frat Boy, Gay Geek
We don’t usually associate gay guys with fraternities…unless it’s college frat porn. However, that’s just another stereotype that needs to be broken, and a concept that should be questioned more often. In other words, how many gay men don’t we hear from?
This article does just that. It’s about an op-ed piece written by a gay guy in a fraternity. He talks about what real life frat house living is like.
He acknowledges the “hyper-masculine, weight-lifting, polo-wearing, country music-listening” reputations that many frat houses and their occupants have.
“They like their beer and their women equally. Both a lot,” he says. “Nowhere in this list do you find Beyoncé or skinny jeans.”
But, he says, there still plenty of gay guys amidst all the rampant heterosexuality.
“[Gay people] join fraternities for the same reason that straight people do,” Harshbarger writes. “For me, an out-of-state student (1,406 miles out of state to be exact), my fraternity is like my family away from home. It’s a support system of 107 best friends that are just as ready to shotgun a brew with me at 8 a.m. on gameday as they are to sit and listen to me lament about how shitty my day was. Surprisingly, brotherhood isn’t contingent upon sexual orientation!”
Although this frat boy claims no one ever discriminated against him, the article goes on to mention examples of gay men who have been discriminated against by other fraternities.
CDC Report on Foreskin
I think the debate about whether or not to circumcise will be ongoing until the end of time, however, a report recently released by the CDC has drawn a few interesting scientific conclusions.
U.S. health officials on Tuesday released a draft of long-awaited federal guidelines on circumcision, saying medical evidence supports having the procedure done and health insurers should pay for it.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines stop short of telling parent to get their newborn sons circumcised. That is a personal decision that may involve religious or cultural preferences, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin.
But “the scientific evidence is clear that the benefits outweigh the risks,” added Mermin, who oversees the agency’s programs on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
I don’t know whether or not this can be disputed. As with all things involving the CDC I have a feeling it can be…you can’t trust anything government. But I’m not an expert on foreskin. I wish I still had mine. And if I were given the choice I never would have been circumcised. The problem is men don’t get that choice. And I don’t care what the CDC says about that.
The rest is here. I think uncut is always sexier.
Kindle Unlimited Hurts Authors?
Even though I do indie publish a lot more these days, I truly don’t know that much about Kindle Unlimited because I’m not part of KDP…for a specific reason. In order to be a KDP author I would have to sign an exclusive with Amazon which would mean I can’t publish the books anywhere else online. I depend on several retail web site where e-books are sold, not just Amazon. I believe in book distribution far and wide. It’s strictly a business decision on my part, and I do keep my books priced at .99 even though many have upped the prices of their books.
In any event, you can still buy my books at Amazon. You just can’t get them through the Kindle Unlimited program because of the Amazon exclusive. If there were no exclusive, I would join. But I’m not given a choice in the matter. So I never bothered to learn much about KU.
But I have been reading a lot of author complaints about KU in the past few weeks. At this point, most of the complaints have been through social media and private message exchanges between authors. I had four of those today myself on Twitter and I’m at a loss because I’ve never been part of KU.
Here’s one article that talks more about it. But there aren’t that many out there openly talking…at least not yet there aren’t. This is what one author said:
Ok, some of you already know, but I had my serials in it for 60 days and lost approx 75% of my income. Thats counting borrows and bonuses.
My sales dropped like a stone. The number of borrows was higher than sales. They didn’t compliment each other, as expected.
Taking a huge ass pay cut while I’m still working my butt off, well that’s not ok. And KU effected my whole list, not just KU titles.
At the time of enrollment I had about 60 titles total.
I planned on giving it 90 days, but I have a kid in the hospital for long term care and I noticed my spending was going to exceed my income-by a lot. I couldn’t wait and watch thing plummet further. I pulled my books. That was on Nov 1, & since then my net revenue has gone up. I’m now at 50% of where I was pre-KU. During the time I was in KU, I had 2 new releases. Neither preformed vastly different than before. They actually earned far less (including borrows).
The entire article is interesting and if you are an author you might want to check it out. I always caution people to read quotes like the one above with a certain amount of apprehension. I’ve seen too many authors lie about their book sales and their income to trust anything anymore. It’s always inflated, and I find it hard to believe that these authors are capable of supporting themselves through writing. The one above has a kid in long term care and she’s paying for that with book sales? Doesn’t sound logical to me. I know what long term care costs. Some authors might be making more, not most, especially those who are not gaming the Amazon system. If these inflated book sales were real, literary agents would be banging down their doors, and so would big publishers. Take it all with a grain of salt. The odds are Z. X. Anonymousauthor who claims she’s making six figures is blowing smoke up your butt.
