Last year, round about this time I was enjoying the warm weather in Mexico with my dad, but this year he had to go on without me. One very important reason was that I’m on the home stretch with my Master’s Thesis, and the other was that I submitted a video to a computer conference and needed to be there to demonstrate it.
The conference meant that I spent a week in Banff with my academic peers, but sadly not Steve. A little escape from Calgary was a good thing in my opinion, and I still had a buddy to hang out with that meant I wasn’t completely isolated from the gay community. During the day I attended the various presentations, demoed my own project, and stuffed myself with the food they lavished on us. At night I went out with my friend to scope out the local night life. There weren’t any exclusively gay bars or clubs in Banff, though I’m told the Aurora is the most gay friendly of the lot. Frankly I enjoyed myself everywhere I went, and having the straight women cruise me like hungry mountain cats was quite an ego boost, as alien and scary as it felt.
One thing that slightly irked me was that my buddy was into using the VLTs to pass the time, and I’m really not a fan of gambling myself. I learned my lesson, thankfully in microcosm, at the Stampede Casino several years ago. Call it bad luck, or just not enough good luck, I doubled my initial money at the slots and then proceeded to slowly and painfully lose it all. I tried to convince my friend not to waste his own money, but instead he turned it into a fun “dare” of sorts, at his own expense. We ended up taking turns pressing the single button needed to start the next spin. Before long I was playing into the superstitions about which numbers came up more frequently, or waiting for irregular intervals before making the next spin. I know how computers generate random numbers, and I’ve taken my statistics courses so I can guesstimate that the probability of winning is pretty low. In fact I’m reasonably sure that you’re just as likely to win or lose the same amount of money if you bet it all on one spin as if you break it up into smaller bets. But the point is to make gambling fun and time consuming, so that you get something out of it even if you do lose.
We played for a couple of hours, and sure enough, my luck was dragging us down. We pressed on – hey, it wasn’t my money anyway! Out of nowhere, just to tease, fate gave me a spin that won us close to $200. I refused to let my friend keep going and we cashed in. It covered the money he had lost gambling around me, with plenty of extra left for our drinks. So I was quite happy with myself after that, and will continue to be happy if I never gamble again in my life. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
I was a bit sad to leave Banff after the week was over. I enjoyed the slower pace, and it was the first city that I didn’t get hopelessly lost in. “How can you get lost,” said my friend, “there’s one main street and all the smaller ones lead to it!” I guess that makes it my kind of town!
Back in Calgary, things were starting to get geared up for Christmas all around us. If this past month was any indication, it will probably be last minute before the world will give us enough of a reprieve to do our own Christmas shopping. We’d like to wish our readers Happy Holidays and hope that the new year holds good things for us all. We’ll be out photographing the New Years Eve events, so hugs are available upon request! I don’t know if we’ll be sending out Christmas cards this year since only a quarter of them actually made it to their destinations last December. The cards featured Snoopy - the adorable black and white cat that we took in after doing an article on the Humane Society over two years ago now – so that you could see how much he’d grown!
A lot of people commented about last month’s cover, especially regarding Ralph. Aside from the typical ribbing, we were amazed at the number of excited squeals of “Hey, I know that guy,” and it even helped to reunite him with a long lost friend in Edmonton. We hear from Bryce that the autographing tradition continues, where people strive to collect each edition of our magazines with the signature of each cover model. That’s the great thing about mostly using real people from our community on the cover – you actually get to meet them! Who knows, these signed copies may be a collector’s item some day. We have one of two copies signed by Biff Naked from our August 2005 edition, if anyone needs to know.
Taboo
As we have done since we began the magazine, we had a booth at the Taboo Sex Show this year. We do these shows every year to help get our name out to an audience that we may otherwise not hit: the home-bound homos and the curious closet cases. This is good exposure both for us, and the advertisers that support us.
In Calgary this year we were conveniently located across from the hot strippers that were featured in many of the performances on the main stage throughout the weekend. As usual we had straight women trying to steer their boyfriends away from our booth, as if seeing our magazine might convert them. We’re not a conversion booth people, we’re just a magazine! But being the only openly and exclusively gay booth at the show, we often had to act as ambassadors for gay people as a whole. It’s important for the more sheltered people to see a real live homosexual, a human being that is able and willing to converse with them, but not out to grab ass or criticize their clothing.
On the last day the sewer backed up and the whole Round-up center stank so badly of crap that I needed to run out and buy two canisters of Febreeze. It helped only marginally to fight back the odor. Enduring that smell was unpleasant for all of the exhibitors in our corner. On the bright side, any scat fetishists would have felt right at home!
Now that we’re up in Edmonton, we also thought it would be worthwhile to have a booth at their version of the Taboo show as well. Steve ended up giving out more copies of the magazine than in Calgary, perhaps because there are more people there that haven’t heard of us yet. This time he was unfortunate to be across from a booth with straight porn playing on a big screen TV, but plenty of straight passers-by offered him their sympathy. Steve noticed that the people in Edmonton were a lot more liberal than in Calgary – not so many chuckles or dirty looks.
We’d like to thank our two Jasons for helping us with transportation and watching our booths in both cities when we needed to pop out to stretch our legs or take photographs. Remember, Steve and I do not own a car, so the help was much appreciated.
Bar Banter
Money Pennies still hasn’t celebrated their 11th anniversary! They didn’t want it to interfere with the World AIDS Day fundraising activities so they considerately rescheduled it for the 5th, 6th, and 7th of January. Lorrie tells us that she has live local entertainment booked for those days, so be sure to stop by and celebrate with them!
Twisted’s 2nd Anniversary party this month was a packed house. They flew out the incomparable Chris Edwards from Toronto to perform in the Anniversary drag shows, and in Diva-Licious the next day.
Chris Edwards made a plea to the audience to reach deep into their pockets and help Calgary’s AIDS Hospice. As she performed her number, person after person came to the front to add money to the jug, and within only 5 minutes they found they had raised over $600 for the SHARP Foundation. Moved like most everyone in the crowd (us included), owners RJ and Cliff matched that amount on behalf of the Twisted Element.
During the World AIDS Day drag show at Twisted, they made it mandatory for their customers to pay a $2.00 cover to the ISCCA in exchange for an AIDS ribbon. All proceeds that night were going to the SHARP Foundation. Twisted Element started them off with a cheque for $1200 out of their own pockets, and another $1200 was raised from door sales. They took a minute of silence for those that had died from complications due to AIDS, during which time the audience was able to fill a donation basket with over $400.
A week later, Steve accompanied RJ and Cliff to see with their own eyes where their donations were going. They made a visit to Beswick house, one of two AIDS Hospices run by the SHARP Foundation, and all of them found it very difficult to hold the tears back. SHARP very much needs the help that they are receiving from the community, and more. They get little additional funding from the Government, and only training for their volunteers through AIDS Calgary. When they house 12 individuals at Beswick house, their weekly grocery bill alone is over $600. The SHARP Foundation often asks that donations be made in material goods rather than cash to ensure that money goes toward bettering the quality of life of their tenants, and not toward administration costs. Without the Beswick House and Scott House, these individuals might be living their last moments on the street, or not receiving the mental, emotional and physical support they need to turn their health around and continue living. A wish list is being compiled by the SHARP Foundation and will be printed in a future edition of GayCalgary.com Magazine, and posted on the Twisted Element website.
In the News
We already stepped around one landmine this month with Ted Morton thankfully not taking Ralph Klein’s place. Morton was known to be bent on turning back gay rights, and some women’s rights too.
But true to his malignant promise, Stephen Harper is pushing ahead with a free vote whether to reopen the topic of same-sex marriage. He complained about how the original vote was sprung on the House of Commons, but now he seeks to spring the free vote on the new Liberal leader Stephane Dion when they are vulnerable. He went to China to shake his finger at them for human rights violations, but he seeks to attack and destroy an aspect of human rights in Canada.
Dion has decided not to impose party discipline, thus allowing the members of his party to vote according to their individual motives rather than towing the party line. I doubt Mr. Harper will be as relaxed with the votes of his conservative MPs. He has already silenced as many people as possible who do not tow the party line on this issue, so even a free vote for his party won’t necessarily be a fair one.
Rant of the Month: Mac versus PC
I’m beginning to get really irritated over those Apple Computer commercials that have been airing the past several months. At first they were cute and I thought “fine, let them have their laughs,” but the more I saw them, the more I realized that what they were saying is just wrong and downright insulting to the PC users who know better.
PCs are only meant for boring business people – dinosaurs in suits. You need a Mac if you want to do anything fun, interesting, or artistic. My name is Rob and I’m a PC. I’m probably about the same age if not younger than the “youthful and hip” Mac user that Apple carefully chose to portray themselves in their own commercials. I have used PCs to compose music, make movies and do graphical designs for work and play; to write stories and articles, and to do 3D modeling, rendering and animation; to design webpages, video games, and software. I’m sorry if that roster of skills doesn’t prove my imagination to be “wild” enough, I’m just a PC after all. Whether the results of my creative pursuits are good or not so good, at least I know it is because of my own skills set and software budget – not because of my computer or operating system. My digital cameras came with software for creating albums and managing photos, but Windows XP has some of that functionality built right into the operating system. Steve and I even use PCs to put this magazine together every month.
Then along comes a Mac who is either so ignorant or so brainwashed as to tell us, after we have shown them all the amazing stuff we did using a PC, that we must be mistaken; such things are “just not possible unless you [are] a Mac.” Bull-freaking-shit. But that’s exactly the message that Apple is doling out to anyone who will believe it, and it’s a bold faced lie.
I’ve found that, to try and talk sense to certain Mac users is like trying to convince a fanatical Bible thumper not to take every passage literally. It’s not their fault, they’ve just been pummeled by the media and their peers - they don’t really know any better. Personally I have not used any kind of Apple computer lately so I don’t know what software comes bundled with Mac OS, or even what software is available to buy separately. I couldn’t tell you the names of any programs for 3D modeling or Software Development that were specifically designed for the Mac, but that doesn’t mean I go assuming that they doesn’t exist, or that Macs are somehow incapable of performing these functions. Nevertheless, these Apple commercials have me thinking that there are people out there who honestly believe that, because a PC is not a Mac, it has inherent limitations. Ones that make it impossible to do anything but “balance cheques books,” and that any attempt to do something creative or artistic will end up comparable to a drunken college student’s attempt at female impersonation. There is so much evidence to the contrary; I don’t even know where to begin. I feel ridiculous having to justify all of the truly amazing artistic and functional creations I’ve been making on my PCs since I first started with a Tandy 1000 in elementary school. It’s just that Mac users want to feel good about their investment, even if it means making PCs an easy scapegoat. In fact I’ll probably be on a lot of people’s hate list for months just for writing this article! Outrageous - who the heck do I think I am, anyway? What do I know about computers?
For those who have never met me in person, or who have missed my previous publisher’s columns, I am in fact finishing up my Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Calgary. My supervisor is a leading researcher in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), which in layman’s terms, is a field that deals with making computers more “user friendly”. I fully admit that the one thing Apple has going for them is their attention to aesthetic appeal - and I understand how vitally important pretty, shiny things are homos. But seriously, something that looks nice is indeed a pleasure to use. Unfortunately in some cases these designers have sacrificed aesthetics for product cost, functionality, compatibility or customizability. We don’t have a single Mac in our research lab – not because Macs are perfect and need no further HCI research, but because Macs and their software are unnecessarily expensive to buy and maintain, their variety is limited, and they are not easily customizable to our needs. When we’re on a modest budget and pushing computer hardware to do things that their designers didn’t intend – things like supporting up to 8 monitors from a single machine to build a seamless video wall - cost efficiency and customizability is tantamount. Expansion slots? Why would anyone need those? I have heard about Macintosh users that have been required to buy a completely new computer system just to upgrade their video card. Hey, that’s great if you have money to burn.
Steve has worked in the computer industry for the past 19 years and has sold a great deal of Apple products during that time, on top of PCs, Atari Computers (not the game systems), and Commodore Amigas. He knows a ton more about the nitty-gritty technical side of computers than I could ever hope to. He explained to me that it is typically more expensive to keep up with the technology that Apple puts out than it is to keep up with that of the PC. On the most part this is because Apple often compromises interchangeability of parts and reverse-compatibility of hardware and software for – you guessed it - aesthetics. You may just want to upgrade your computer, but are forced to get a new monitor and printer because the old connectors are “too ugly” to be included on the latest model (or the computer and monitor are a single unit). Some might say this is another one of Apple’s cunning strategies to separate you from the money in your wallet, but if you’re willing and able to fork it out then who am I to criticize?
Apple claims that Macs are able to do “life stuff” out of the box, while saying that the only thing PCs come bundled with is a calculator and a clock. Actually, Windows XP comes bundled with entry-level multimedia applications too – Windows Movie Maker, Windows Media Player, Sound Recorder, MS Paint, Notepad, Wordpad, and Text to Speech to only name a few (I didn’t bother to install all of these utilities because I’ve found better tools to suit my more advanced needs). Nice try Apple, what an utter lie you just told. But yes, sometimes PCs come with “trial software” in the hopes that you will try it out, it will do something that you need, and you will buy the full version. With such a large variety of PC software, this can help inform your expectations when you sift through all the software that is available on the market. Macintoshes don’t have the same problem because apparently the available array of software is pretty narrow. This doesn’t really matter though, Macs can run PC programs now, so it’s “the only computer you’ll ever need.” But wait, PCs have been able to emulate Macs for the last 3 to 4 years…and nobody cared! Who needs who in this partnership?
But Apple breaks the mould and invents smart designs that PC people have never thought of – like the magnetic power cord. It must be something revolutionary to warrant a whole commercial. When I first saw this product, I admit I raised my eyebrows and thought “that’s interesting…” My eyebrows quickly returned to a frown, “not really a selling point in itself, just an interesting precaution for a very specific situation.” Then I heard about people who were baffled that, after storing their iPods in their iMac carry cases, they would find all of their music files missing – their iPod hard drive had been completely wiped. It was then that I realized why PC people never thought of anything like the magnetic power cord; because PC designers weren’t asinine enough to violate the one simple rule we all should have learned back in elementary school - MAGNETS AND COMPUTERS DON’T MIX! What’s next Apple, the underwater electrical socket?! Computers use special magnetic surfaces that are imprinted with precise magnetic pulses to store persistent data. Therefore it is good to keep any unregulated magnets as far away from computer storage mediums as possible, or they will alter those imprints. CDs are an exception because they are imprinted optically not magnetically, but otherwise magnets have unpredictable effects that may corrupt or erase data. It’s not rocket science people. Sorry for the jab, Apple, but you definitely deserved it like a smack upside the head.
But Macs are so much more user friendly than PCs. The PC interfaces are so dull, ugly, and difficult to use – they just don’t make sense. Let me tell you something, there is a lot more to user friendliness than aesthetics. It doesn’t matter how pretty a computer or program looks; if it doesn’t behave according to your expectations then it is not friendly to you. As with everything in life, we must mount a learning curve to form appropriate expectations of the world around us. Once those expectations are in place, we then generalize them to everything else, and learn of the exceptions as we go along. The field of HCI exists to make computers – even Macs - better meet our expectations when we use them. For Apple to promote the idea that PCs are too complicated, badly designed, dull, ugly, and difficult to use is a very cunning way of giving their followers plenty of excuses not to stick through the learning curve needed for them to understand the differences of a PC.
Like learning a new language, it’s always hard to take a step back to a state where you may not be able to communicate the things that you could in your native tongue. Now, along comes someone that you perceive to be more knowledgeable about language than yourself, and they tell you “learning another language is a waste of time, other languages are stupid and clumsy, English is better and more expressive and there are lots of things that you can only say in English that just don’t translate to any other language.” Assuming you are gullible enough to believe this half-truth, you would probably not remain very motivated to learn Spanish. So in essence, I conclude that Apple spoon-feeds their clients the belief that they are not smart enough to NOT use a Mac…and I bet lots of them just eat it up! Artistic expression is not “juvenile and a waste of time,” but the pretentious elitist attitude Apple wants their customers to have certainly is.
Let me share a little anecdote from my undergraduate days. At that time we only had Linnux and Unix machines in the undergraduate computer science lab. The lab techs didn’t deem it necessary to include frivolous creativity software, so as a creative person I felt pretty strangled…much the same view that Apple has about PCs, though I’ll be darned if I know why. I had to go to the Library Info Commons where they had whole rooms full of PCs to get away from those horrible lab machines. (On a side note, the newest Mac OS was built on a combination of Linnux and Unix…ironic how I ran away from its humble predecessors.) The trouble was that everyone else wanted to use the PCs too, so I often needed to wait for a computer to become available. One day I walked into the commons just wanting to check my E-mail, and as I was waiting I noticed that the three token Macs in the back corner were going completely untouched. “How hard could it be,” I thought to myself. “All I need is a web browser to check my webmail.” Sure enough, there was an icon for Netscape Navigator right on the desktop – a program I had used plenty of times on my PC in the past. I sat down and double clicked the icon…and waited. Nothing happened. I tried a few more times, thinking I might have double-clicked too fast or too slowly. I looked down at the mouse to see what other possible things I might need do to run the program (right click?), but the mouse only had one button, and the keyboard had no helpful key labels either. After exhausting all my possibilities, I gave up in frustration and continued waiting for the next PC.
I told my story to someone who I knew to be a Mac user and they laughed. “The program was probably running, you just needed to go into the menu along the top of the screen and open a window for it.”
“But I double clicked the icon for it,” I said. “So I already told the computer what I wanted to use. Why is there an extra step to open a window for it?” Come to think of it, is there any case where I would run a web browser but not want a window? To me this was not user friendly at all, but it made me realize that PCs and Macs operate on different paradigms – neither is necessarily better or “friendlier” than the other because both are imperfect and need to be learned. Once you’re comfortable with one, it can screw you up because you may try applying that knowledge incorrectly to the other (in HCI this is called “negative transfer”). Because I expected the browser window to come up when I activated the icon, I didn’t pay attention to the subtle change in the menu along the top of the screen. I have been using computers since I was 12 years old, back when visual environments like Windows didn’t exist, and everything had to be run from a command line. But I failed to perform the most basic task of running a program on a visual point-and-click system that Apple proclaims is so much more user friendly than anything available on a PC. I am truly humbled.
I have seen my Junior High Art teacher use a Mac and struggle to remember the sequence of menus he needed to activate a certain function – just like I’ve seen my dad struggle similarly on his PC. I’ve watched university professors who have used Macs for years and years, labor to connect their iMac to the wireless internet in our computer lab. The menus and options for wireless connectivity looked just as complicated as those on my Toshiba laptop, but I couldn’t help at all because they were in an unfamiliar configuration that had me thrown off.
My personal favorite: Apple tells Mac owners outright that their computers are impervious to viruses and hackers, just because they are Macs. When I asked someone how she knew that her iMac was secure, she replied that she had never caught a virus in the two years that she had owned it. Yeesh, it’s just like those people who say “I haven’t caught AIDS from barebacking yet, so I must be immune.” Macs may not be susceptible to the exact same viruses as PCs, just like dogs aren’t susceptible to the exact same diseases as cows. They are built and function slightly differently, and thus have different weaknesses for viruses to exploit. Maybe there are more viruses for PCs than for Macs, but that’s likely because worldwide more people use PCs than they do Macs. A bigger population of PCs means viruses can spread and mutate more easily. If the whole PC world got scared and switched platforms, you’d see an explosion of viruses for the Mac all the same. Sure there are rookie PC users too. When they don’t take the right precautions (like keeping Windows up to date) then viruses and hackers can sometimes get through and spread to other rookies.
I tell you what, my PC has been virus free for a lot longer than two years, so by the same flawed reasoning it must be impervious too! It helps that I have trustworthy virus protection software which I keep up to date, and I don’t go downloading and running silly stuff from the internet. I recently uninstalled my 3rd-party firewall in favor of using the one built into Windows Security Center (it came free with a Windows update) and I have never been hacked, as far as I know. I have Windows Defender installed, but Internet Explorer 7 has a lot of features built in to protect me from Spyware and Phishing websites anyway. Incidentally, Norton Antivirus, Norton Internet Security and Norton Firewall are all available for the Mac…why would these products exist if Mac OS is already immune to all of those security threats. Someone is lying here, and I’m certain it’s not me.
Ahh, speaking of upgrades, they are a wonderful idea. No piece of software including operating systems, no matter how well designed, can be without flaws for all time. The approach Microsoft takes is that they give updates that patch their existing systems, whether to correct flaws, install useful add-ons, or support the latest gadgets that need stuff they didn’t anticipate or include as standard. They are kind enough to offer this service 100% free of charge to authentic Windows users. There are still people out there using Windows 95 on Pentium machines that are perfectly safe and satisfied thanks to the latest Windows Updates and add-on programs – as long the computer still does what they need it to, why replace it? You can still be a writer with a “wild imagination”, and Microsoft Word 97 doesn’t ask for very much processing power to operate. Other side of the coin - Steve tells me that Mac users do their diligence by upgrading their OS or their entire computer system on a slightly more frequent cycle than most PC users, but again, money to burn.
So Mr. PC is embarrassed to show off his home movie – well maybe he doesn’t have as much experience as Mr. Mac does making them. Maybe he is better at software development than he is at movie making, but he is just a stereotype anyway. Maybe the Mac does come with better entry-level video editing software than Windows Movie Maker. If that’s the case then the quality of production has absolutely nothing to do with the operating system or the hardware - it’s the software and the person using it that make home videos good or bad. When the software hides details to make things simpler, some degree of technical and artistic control is relinquished to the computer. As a beginner, presets can be big timesavers, but you’ll later hit your head when you realize that you’ve grown beyond them. On the other hand, showing more details to give better control can be overwhelming to the beginner and make for a steeper learning curve. It’s a difficult trade-off, and there is no single good solution.
When I have created videos in the past I used Adobe Premiere Pro – industry standard on both PC and Mac platforms. It has a good balance between simplicity and control such that I was able to make movies right off the bat, but learn more sophisticated techniques as I went along. It would be unfair to compare Adobe Premiere Pro to Windows Movie Maker, simply because they are intended for people with totally different skill levels. Comparing apples to apples, how can the exact same software be any more powerful on a Mac than on a PC? Ultimately it is the same engine under the hood; it just sometimes costs more for the Mac users to buy because most software is first developed for the PC - developers have to rework parts of their software to be compliant with the Mac, and thus tag on an extra charge. How dare Apple cherry-pick the fact that they can now run Microsoft Office “just as good” as a PC. I looked into it and they neglect to mention that it is only a watered down version (MS Access and many other programs standard to the PC suite were nowhere to be found). More interestingly they gloss over the fact that many of their professional-level creative tools are available – for cheaper – on a PC. It’s irresponsible to mislead people like that, shame on them.
There’s a saying in life: “A fool with a tool is still just a fool.” Apple can say that they make things easier for artists and average people, but their computers are tools like any other. I would bet my money on an experienced graphic artist over a rank amateur, regardless of which platform they preferred using. There is just no substitution for good old fashioned know-how, and it’s dangerous to make people think that there is. I don’t need an engineering degree to design buildings – I own a Mac!
What most makes me mad about the Apple commercials is that they look down on PC users as if they’re some race of blind mole-men incapable of human expression except through spreadsheets and pie charts. You may think I’m being overdramatic, but it is no accident that they chose a Mr. PC who wears glasses with the appearance, voice, and mannerisms of a mole or some other small rodent. He always wears a business suit yet can’t fathom Mr. Mac in his “big boy clothes” being just like him. It’s hypocritical because this is the same way those Mac users I mentioned earlier can’t fathom doing anything creative on a PC. Mr. PC is insecure and takes cheap shots at Mr. Mac just like Apple is taking cheap shots by making these commercials. Mr. PC is not a PC at all, he is the side of Apple that Apple doesn’t want you to see – nothing more than a character foil playing devil’s advocate, with the sole purpose of making Mr. Mac look better. Oh come on, you didn’t really expect an Apple-paid actor to fairly represent their competition, did you? But having him there sure gave the illusion that PCs had the opportunity to defend themselves. Get a real person from IBM / Microsoft / Dell / Compaq / HP to fairly represent PCs in those commercials and Apple wouldn’t be the ones laughing any more.
Marketing gimmicks aside, the choice between Mac and PC is purely a stylistic one. You’ll probably grow up using one or the other, or maybe a bit of both. Stick with the system that you are most comfortable using as long as it meets your needs and you can afford to keep up with the technology. Use it to the best of your ability, leave room to grow, and above all respect the skills of your peers because you can learn from them regardless of which brand of computer they prefer.
People in this world have enough petty reasons to snub one another – age, race, gender, sexuality, appearance…we don’t need “computer”. Can I get a touché on that?
If you’re looking rather to express your opinion, write a letter to the publisher by E-mailing Publisher@gaycalgary.com. If you’ve got something good to say about someone or something, then that’s awesome! If you’ve got something bad to say about someone or something…well, just try to keep those claws sheathed!
