Monday, July 06, 2009

Well, That Explains the Pottery

Acephalous addresses Rob Liefield's assertion about one of his characters being a "non-gay Spartan".
The Spartans are still not homosexual in the manner of the Boetians, Eleians, or a host of my closest friends; however, on their wedding nights they gave the bride a man's haircut, dressed her up men's clothes, did their thing, then "retired to [the] usual apartment, to sleep with the other young men." Lycurgus seems to have mandated that all young men need and must be double-super-secret beards, which means that because no one is gay, everyone is; or that because everyone is gay, no one is—or maybe they were Heisenbergian beards, in that no Spartan could be measurably gay while being observed and vice versa because we have inadequate tools.
This may well be the first appearance in print of the term "Heisenbergian beards", which deserves a notice all of its own; this should not be confused with the related Schrödinger's beard, which simultaneously exists and does not exist until the bedroom door is opened.

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