Hoelt

Before my illness, I ran Deadly Affairs, a successful Murder Mystery Party business.

I have always wanted to have a murder mystery party. What kind of people make up your clientele? How much do these sorts of things run for? And what are the most common occasions people have those parties (birthday, wedding, fancy dinner)?

Interestingly, I used to be fairly homophobic, although I'm an atheist. Before I knew any gay people, I was adamantly supportive of gay rights and extremely angry at bigotry and intolerance.

But then two of my best friends came out as bisexual and I had some of the most ridiculous thoughts, like they were doing it for attention and on and on like that. I had all sorts of hesitations, for some reason. I couldn't acknowledge they were bisexual, it was really, really weird. There was also a kid I didn't like because I thought he was just "pretending to be gay" for attention, when really he was not-yet-out-of-the-closet bisexual transgendered. I dunno. I guess I was never fearful of gays, or hateful (except, perhaps, when I was much younger), but I somehow had a bunch of ugly thoughts about people based on their sexual orientation due to ignorance. And before I knew what homosexuality really was (i.e., that it actually existed as a sexual orientation), I was truly homophobic, because I thought it was just a bunch of idiots who were mistaken, and I used the word gay/faggot all the time, and so on, and so on.

And then when my history teacher came out to the class in a slightly subtle way (not outright, but extremely easy to conclude), I didn't acknowledge the fact that they were gay because I "didn't want to assume" that's what they were. When I heard them reference their homosexuality as if it were obvious the next year (in a more contextualized environment: GSA) I felt like a fucking idiot. It hit me like a brick-- why didn't I make that conclusion?

Today, I am not homophobic in the least, and by now a ton of my friends have come out (the majority, perhaps?), and whenever I go new places the people I tend to get to know first happen to be gay (I am a lesbian magnet, apparently). But goddamn things were shameful before.

I also grew up in the midwest, but always called them roly pollies, but it might be New Jersey from my dad (and the exact town where my dad was born lit up on the map from the quiz). But I call other things potato bugs.

Yes. Generally the idea that you learn "like a child" sounds good, but considering adults do not have the same abilities as children and instead have other skills that are powerful in other ways (making a study plan, having more self directed interests, learning and applying rules, conscious pattern recognition), this is not as valuable of a promise as one may think. But there is a new version of RS that has more grammar explanations which may be improved, but I do not know. On top of these issues is the fact that it is a very expensive option. Ultimately the "best" resource is the resource that engages you, and RS may engage you more than duo or assimil, as it has tutoring sessions and more pictures/audio, but for hundreds of dollars' difference in cost, whether it is the best option for you is an important question. To a large extent it is about opportunity cost-- if RS were free or cheap, I doubt people would be half as critical of it, but RS is very famous and makes huge claims of being the best resource. Meanwhile, there are some free resources that are quite effective and fun as it is.

Pardon, what is OT?