The Blue Oyster?
Is that the name? I've only heard tell of it. ;-)
I chose 'Wilmer' for the 'gunsel' in The Maltese Falcon. If you're not familiar with the story then 'gunsel' is apparently an old, obscure gay slur. I guess Hammett was being sly.
” ‘gunsel’ is apparently an old, obscure gay slur”
As an old, obscure specimen my own self, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I’ve always seen it used to mean a punk with a gun he’s too quick to use, like...well, like the punk in The Maltese Falcon.
That said, I climb up upon my soapbox, joints creaking, to harangue once again about that use of the word “gay.”
The very first step in the legitimization of homosexuality was to pressure people into refraining from using derogatory terminology for homos. “You *have* to call them ‘gay people.’ It’s mandatory, and if you don’t fall in line, we’ll tell everybody that you’re a bigot.”
The establishment of that first principle, that the use of derogatory terminology was in some way wrongful, paved the way for everything that has come since.
If we are to restore sanity, if we are to roll back the advances of the liberal agenda for the legitmization of homosexuality, we must first make it once again socially acceptable to deplore homosexuality. If homosexuality is deplorable, then it must be perfectly all right to refer to it in derogatory terms. That principle can be established by insisting on one’s privilege of calling a spade a spade—just as the homos established the opposite by denying that privilege.
Those who think they are somehow engaged in some productive course of action by refraining from the use of such terms as faggot, rump ranger, butt cowboy, twinkie, swish, pouf, etc., are dead wrong. All they are doing is conceding that all-important first battleground—the battleground of words—without even a struggle. Pre-emptive surrender.