How many times do you have to have gay sex before you're officially gay? (or, Change isn't always good, but that's no reason to be a judgmental jerk)

There are just way too many clichés designed to discourage experimentation with your life, your identity and your habits.

When you're young, whatever you feel like doing is not really what you feel like doing. It's described by others as just a phase. When you're older, anytime you try something new, it's a trend. Then you're going through teenage rebellion. Then you're finding yourself. When you're older still, you're not trying to enjoy life's infinite variety, you're going through a mid-life crisis.

Can't someone just do something new because they feel like it and not have it categorized like a mental illness? Isn't it okay if something is a passing phase, why are the above clichés packed with such scornful judgment?

I mean really, can't a dude wear a dress once in a while just to try it? Does that make him a transvestite? Surely there must be a limit on how many times you can have gay sex and still not be officially gay. Please say it's more than ten times so I don't have to change my Facebook profile… to Republican.

Where is the line between a passing phase and your identity? Isn't any experimentation a part of your identity anyway?

I've never understood the mocking of our past selves for harmless preferences or even noble goals. How many times have you experienced some variant of this conversation: Oh my gosh, did we really used to X? (Where X equals any previous activity now discarded: wear legwarmers, listen to [a band fallen from fame], use gallons of hairspray, aspire to be vegan, try to live off the land, etc.)

Why is a phase sometimes viewed with such reverent awe (see Piccasso's Blue Period) and other times viewed with such mocking disdain (see glam metal)?

One of the rare clichés I know of that supports change is the dogmatic, and therefore wrong statement, "All change is good." That one is best debunked visually, as seen below.

[Cartoon first published in QECE #3 page 3.]

This rant got started because I wanted to kick off my new website logo and blog name with an explanation, but there's not much to say except that I want to have more fun. I didn't like the old stuffy design, and I wanted a more snazzy title. I wanted the posts to be shorter and to gravitate away from gravitas and drift toward more fun.

Then I ditched the idea of posting about the rebranding (as it's called in the dot biz) because the last thing the world needs is a blog entry talking about the blog itself. Whoops.

So, is calling my blog The Semi-True Adventures of Lar just a passing phase? Almost certainly. Is it part of who I am? Almost definitely.

Clichés usually annoy me, because they're levers pulled by the reflexive and lazy mind, but there are some I can live with, like this: Variety is the spice of life, suckas.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers. For more info, visit LarryNocella.com.