Chicagoman seems to be a little bit hostile toward the fairer sex for my tastes. But I’m gonna have to give it to ‘im. As far as the “ladies” who are under discussion, I’m pretty sure his explanations ring true.

Reason #3: Because absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder
“My boyfriend Greg and I decided to do the long-distance thing after I was accepted to a graduate program 200 miles from where we lived. The first few months were fine, but I soon found myself becoming extremely attracted to my lab partner, Henry. What began as innocent flirting eventually wound up with us in bed. After the program was over, I returned home to Greg. Being with him was really difficult, but I didn’t break up with him initially because I was still attracted to him, too. I visited Henry a few times, and realized that he was really more of a fling, probably born out of boredom, and that Greg was the one for me. I eventually stopped communicating with Henry. I never told Greg about what happened, which occasionally makes me feel guilty, but I chalk my cheating up to being young and silly. He and I are still together, four years since my program ended.”
– Tamara, 33, Portland, OR

Imagine if the tables were reversed, how do you think Tamara would react if she found out that Greg was cheating? Once again the rationilization and no remorse. She was also bored, that is ridiculous. So a woman cheats on a man becuase she’s bored, what are we supposed to be entertaining you at every opportunity?

It’s a pretty big problem, but not an exclusively female trait. “Tamara” would be leaning toward the senior edge of this generational bracket — kiddies who conduct themselves as if the universe was cobbled together by some Kismet of denominational preference, for no purpose whatsoever save to entertain them. Therefore, boredom justifies anything & everything. How could it not?

Probably the first three paragraphs make up an appropriate teasing of this post at One Man’s Kingdom. I left a comment chastising the author for not coming up with examples, but really, without the examples it’s a good piece of prose all by itself.

This is a real problem. Young, inexperienced females who don’t know enough to have one opinion or another, are having it indoctrinated into them that they should disrespect men. So that’s wrong, because if men really should be disrespected, they’ll eventually learn that on their own. They don’t need some work of fiction tutoring them on it. The other thing is, presumably bright, presumably talented, presumably creative, presumably independent-thinking script-writers, are taking good money and in return, are churning out cookie-cutter garbage.

That causes inflation. Of which I disapprove.

Every new season on public television seems to bring in a new suite of cop shows and career-woman dramas that relegate men to yet lower positions in the overall scheme of things. It is now nearly always a woman who is in a position of leadership, and a cadre of loyal lieutenant women that secure her place. The men are the labourers and the villains, though a few exceptions are made for the effeminate, fashion-conscious man who can be relied upon to be a faithful servant of the matriarch.

If this was only a case of women wanting to see themselves in authority, then I wouldn’t have bothered remarking it. What is more significant is the grossly demeaning way in which the men are depicted and treated. The cop shows are the worst. Nearly every episode starts with the discovery of a female victim, and the perpetrator is soon discovered to be a man. Usually a sex offendor to boot. And a control-freak who is cruel to animals, and probably a right-wing homophobic fascist with a racist world-view. Not to mention an appalling dress-sense and an old-fashioned ’50s attitude to women (God created an imperfect world around 1950, according to popular girl-power drama).

This modern-day redefining of the old-fashioned slime-ball has brought with it a parallel redefinition of the cop who takes things into her own hands. Dirty Harry is now a much dirtier Harriet. Any man who disrespects women – and that would appear to be most of us – is now ripe for the arrogant swagger of a 20 something police lieutenant, with bust bursting out of straining chemise, face freshly made-up and hair coiffed within the last 10 minutes. The air is thick with her venomous, inquisitorial pronouncements on the hapless male’s motives, modus and general lack of worth to the world – and with each new season, the punk is feeling more stupidly lucky than the season before, and each new law-enforcement mistress is having her day made. TV men are getting quite the dealing to – pistol whippings, beatings and the odd killing to drive the point home. All of it, needless to say, carrying with it the obvious message that such violence towards men is fully justified.

I hope people are noticing, before they complain too much, that all these “stand up for men for a change” posts are sourced on material I’ve found linked from lady bloggers. Hope they notice that before they do that cute feminist thing, whining about “men whining” about things. I’ve always adored that trait among feminists. A classic case of being what one calls others.

The latest comes from Rachel, although thinking back on it, I think I found out about Rachel’s from Dr. Helen. Or vice versa. Dunno. The month of August is always like this; we’re about to celebrate womens’ suffrage, and Barry O has just added a guy to his ticket who seems to be sworn to destroy divorced men and therefore the children those men support. Anyway — this one is about anti-male merchandise. For which, it would appear, there is a robust market:

Michele went to a store in the mall this weekend and because she is an oppressed woman obviously in denial about what pigs men are, she didn’t squeal happily and whip out her credit card when she saw a collection of sassy, non-nonsense, finger-snapping, girl-power mugs with captions like:

I only fake it so he’ll buy me stuff.
I love sensitive men. they’re easier to take advantage of.
Platinum digger… when gold just ain’t enough.

And Michele’s personal favorite…

You go girlfriend! Want another glass of Shiraz? Sex And The City is coming up in a few minutes.

Well, time to retreat back into those stale old platitudes and cliches that don’t mean anything at all. Like, for example, “All Women Aren’t Like That.”

No, seriously. Not only are all women not like that, but I think this stuff is finally starting to go out of style. Maybe. I dunno. Anyway, I was thinking so…then I found out about all this lovely, astringent pink merchandise you can buy. Now I’m not so sure.

Time will tell.

Isn’t it funny how, when a fad or fashion starts that encourages us to be nice and considerate of each other, it’s uncool before the year is out — but when it encourages us to blame things on each other and become a nasty bunch of inter-fighting, back-biting curmudgeons and bitches, it just seems to go on and on forever?

Via Dr. Helen (who picked it up through Glenn Sacks), we learn of a lady who has been smacked upside the head by reality. And you have to feel a little bit sorry for her, between your tirades of “you stupid bitch.” And “Duh”…

When I made the decision to divorce my children’s father and move to Portland when our twins were age 2, I thought I was the only parent my sons, Alex and Zavier, would ever need. I was mistaken.

No matter how much love I poured into my children’s hearts, my sons were starving with “father hunger” for the man named Lee, who named them and held them when they were just a few seconds old.
:
I share this journey with readers because I know men aren’t always the only ones to blame when Daddy isn’t a part of his children’s lives. Women have a larger role in that than we’d like to admit — before and after conception.

I’m reading through this and wondering “who’s having a tough time admitting this, exactly?” After all, throughout my life, all you have to do is string together those chemically charged words: “Women” and “Choice.” The subject being discussed need not be abortion. It can be hospital vs. home birth, it can be holistic medicines vs. clinical, it can be formula vs. breast feeding, it can be the new family car, what color to paint the kitchen, etc. etc. etc. All present must genuflect before the goddess’ choice.

I’ve lived in a time in which women were encouraged to “stand up for themselves” — and what it really has meant, from what I can see, is “everyone should just find out what she wants to do and find a way to get it done.” The confusion is between compromise and dictatorship.

Could it be, that those who have insisted on such a sorry state of affairs, are one and the same as those who express bewilderment and surprise that “men aren’t always the only ones to blame when” something turns to crap? Could such a diseased mind exist…and get out of bed and get dressed in the morning…and find a way to function in other walks of life?

I suppose, looking back on it, it’s quite possible. I know there are those who are always sticking up for “womens’ rights” even in situations where it makes little sense to do so, even when the “right” in question is a right that cannot be expressed, for it is a phantom right enjoyed by nobody else. Like, for example, the right to stop anybody from forming a bad thought in their noggins about you; or if they do manage to form it, to keep it from being expressed. In the case of separating from a child’s parent, occasionally it is pointed out that the “father” in question has been nothing more than a sperm donor, and it was logically impossible for the situation to turn out any other way — the lady, when available, shoulda done a better job doing her pickin’. I know there are those who puff out their chests and spew our their bile as the conversation takes that unpleasant turn, and can be counted upon to haughtily intone, “So HE can screw around, and when the marriage crumbles it’s HER fault? How DARE you!”

It is a good point, or it has the glimmerings of logic; just the makings of something that might be worth mentioning.

The truth is that it’s an impossibility to tear down one life and begin another, without rocking the foundation of those around you — therefore, both sexes have the responsibility to build lives that will endure. And that means picking out people who will work for them long term. For those destined to reach maturity with working sets of sex organs, and thus blessed with the ability to create new life, this responsibility is all the more sacred and binding.

And there we get to the heart of the matter: We tend not to teach this to our little girls. It is thought to be roughish and thuggish to instill in our little girls a responsible skepticism about intra-human compatibilities. We tend to allow them to blossom into womanhood without telling them any of the things children should be told, about people, while they’re still children.

Worst of all: Once we see feminism is making an attempt to infect their young minds with all of its negativity, our medicinal balm for this is to encourage our young girls to “respect” life by making it more abundant. Nothing is more adorable and irresistible than that elfin cherub just begging you to let her keep the flea-bitten creature that followed her home, or the bird with the broken wing she nursed back to health…or please, oh pretty please, can she please have a puppy?

The result is a budding adult with “Single Mom” written all over her DNA. Her Will Be Done in all things — no compromises — and when the choice to be made is something on which she has no opinion, the social burden rests on her to form one. Once the choice is made, it is well outside socially-accepted norms to criticize her oh so sacred choice, for that is to criticize her; and if you criticize her, of course, you must be criticizing everything female that ever lived.

Similarly, if a bad choice has an origin that traces back to the depths of her noggin, even partially through a shared, intertwined pedigree that trails off to other places — society has stigmatized our readiness, willingness and ability to point out that it was a bad choice. And if that’s unavoidable, then somewhere there has to be a man who is at fault.

It’s a recipe for disaster. We shouldn’t blame the women for it, because anytime you have someone who owns all of a decision insofar as the authority to make it, and none of a decision insofar as the burden of accepting ownership of it, the endeavor is doomed. This poor lady, by confessing her surprise that some of this might actually have been her doing, reveals that she was never taught this basic principle of responsibility in childhood. And in revealing that, she reveals she was raised to be a single mother almost from birth.

I wonder how many share her plight. Ponder with me, if you want; but if you come up with an answer, don’t dare say it out loud — for you are not allowed to. You are only allowed to do and say things that have contributed to our skyrocketing single-parent household population in the first place.

Inspired by a comment made about the Wives Scolding Husbands post, I went out searching for a certain Yoplait commercial and landed on this great site, commercialsihate.com. I’ll let them speak for themselves about the “Stupid Husband” genre of commercials.

I know why they do it.

They do it because the woman is the consumer of the household.

But men make buying decisions too, ya know.
And we don’t LIKE to see ourselves portrayed as glazed-eyed, mouth-ajar helpless MORONS.

Daddy can’t cook. Daddy can’t clean. Daddy can’t discipline the child.
Daddy can’t control himself in Circuit City.
Daddy runs in circles holding a baby at arm’s length.
He has absolutely no idea what it is or why it makes that noise.
Daddy takes the kids to McDonalds because Mom’s Not Home.

And the fat single woman watching at home laughs heartily “Ha! It’s so true!”

Yeah, we’re making wonderful progress at learning how to live together…when the best way to sell a product to one class, is to call people belonging to the other class complete dimwits.

And, a great deal of the time, remain completely silent on whether or not your product is any good.

Oh well. You certainly can’t level that charge at the yogurt commercial. She does talk about the yogurt being delicious. Although I have to wonder about the necessity of getting permission from my wife before rummaging around in the refrigerator…for…uh, the key lime pie in the meat drawer??

There are way too many “He Uses Brand X” commercials to even count. Most of them take place conveniently in front of the household medicine cabinet, where we can see his half of the cabinet is filled up, and her half is all empty except for the one box of wonder-drug. Stupid dolt. What did he ever do before he met her.

And of course…nobody can ever forget this classic.

Funny thing about women. When we “objectify” them, that usually amounts to looking at them when they aren’t wearing (by choice) too much in the way of clothes, and admiring their lovely lines. When it comes back the other way they’re calling us stupid morons. Or buying something from someone else who did.

Oh dear. I feel so victimized. I think I shall start an activist group and launch a protest. That…or, pop open a beer and make myself a sammich. Hope I can find my way around the kitchen.

I was interested in this post which revisits a familiar topic, namely, the wife who doesn’t treat her husband with the goddamned common courtesy you’d extend to a drunken bum pounding on your front door at one o’clock in the morning. I think we can all admit, it’s a situation far more familiar in day-to-day living, than it is in conversation; we tend not to discuss it. Even when confronted with it directly, we still don’t audibly notice it, or comment on it.

I met a young couple the other day with three little boys. The father, who was in the military, was getting ready to leave in a couple of days for Iraq. As I chatted with them, I tried to think of a way to convey my thanks to him for putting his life on the line in the service of our country; I tried to think of a way to express my concern and my empathy for him and his family. As I was half listening to the conversation and half trying to decide the best way to express my gratitude and concern to virtual strangers, something happened that really made me sad. I was speaking to the wife and the youngest son, barely a toddler, decided he wanted to try and tackle the staircase. As he attempted to go downstairs, his oldest brother got in front of him and stopped him. The toddler got upset at this impediment and started crying. The mother saw what was happening and began reprimanding her older son for upsetting the baby. Upon this, the father stepped forward in defense of his son and explained to his wife that he’d told the boy to watch his brother and not let him go downstairs. His wife’s response was to roll her eyes and yell, “Hello! Who’s the adult here? You don’t put your six year old son in charge of the baby, you do it yourself. My gosh! Am I the only adult around here. Can’t I trust you to handle anything?” Then she turned back to me, rolled her eyes and apologized (I’m sure for the alleged stupidity of her husband and not her own behavior) and politely continued our conversation.

There are lots of reasons for this behavior running rampant today. One of them is confirmation bias:

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or as a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis.

Confirmation bias is of interest in the teaching of critical thinking, as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence challenging a preconceived idea but not to evidence supporting it.

In this case, the bias to be confirmed is that the hubby is just another one of the kids. It’s very fashionable to think this, and a lady who wants to think it will find a way to believe it.

Another causative factor seems to be that society pressures women into certain things. Among these, acquiring the proper accessories…cell phone…purse…dog to carry in the purse…husband. Meanwhile there is no opposing pressure for women to partner up with a good Joe, and really share a life with him. So it’s easy for a dude to fall into that trap of becoming an accessory. And every noun has a verb. You talk a phone, you carry a purse, you cuddle a dog, and the fella…well, if your girlfriend is scolding her fella and talking down to him, and you’re treating yours with some measure of respect — why, that’s just uncool on you. And so, there is this race among the fashion-minded. A race to be nasty, condescending, and rude. A race to bark out orders the fastest.

And familiarity, of course. Familiarity breeds contempt. The crazy bag lady pounding on your door in the middle of the night, she’s still entitled to some please-and-thank-you. Husbands, not so much.

We shouldn’t forget protocol. Women excel at learning protocol, at incorporating and becoming acclimated to a new social custom. And protocol is really nothing more than stigma. It should come as no news to anyone over the age of thirty, that our modern society has been subject to a battery of social changes in the last few years — which are new stigmatizations. Treating a man with courtesy, decency and deference has become one of the stigmatizations. It’s supposed to be all about equality. But it really isn’t, is it?

On this point, the woman henpecking her husband in front of strangers, or near-strangers, is a discredit to society in general. She demonstrates that we have elevated rudeness to a fundamental of some misguided new form of etiquette. And she proves that those among us who have not actively promoted it, have passively accepted it.

Substantial numbers among our ladies, it would appear, would rather stand accused of being impolite and even uncultured, than of being known as a Stepford Wife:

Stepford Wife

1.) Used to describe a servile, compliant, submissive, spineless wife who happily does her husband’s bidding and serves his every whim dutifully.

2.) Can also be used to describe a wife who is cookie-cutter & bland in appearance and behavior. Subscribes to a popular look and dares not deviate from that look.

This term is borrowed from the fictional suburb of Stepford, Connecticut in Ira Levin’s 1972 novel, The Stepford Wives, later made into movies (in 1975 and 2004). In the story, men of this seemingly ideal town have replaced their wives with attractive robotic dolls devoid of emotion or thought.

1.) She’s such a stepford wife, I’ve seen her greet her husband at the door after work with a beer and a kiss 4 days in a row!

2.) I just got back from the pta meeting, I’ve never seen so many stepford wives.

2b.) The SNL skit “Mom Jeans” features women dressed to earn the SW distinction.

I have never quite grasped the complete picture on what exactly is so wrong about the Stepford Wife. I’ve seen the Katharine Ross movie and I’ve seen Nicole Kidman’s version. Both of them looked, to me, like movies with happy endings in the middle, with events taking a downward tailspin toward the closing credits. I never did get the impression I was tuned in to the desired mood in either one of those; the middle events seem dark, like I’m supposed to read some kind of tragedy into a situation where a man is relaxing in a comfy chair and his missus is bringing him brandy and cigars. What’s the problem?

I mean yeah, maybe it’s not an ideal situation to have your lady replaced by a robot. But perhaps asking the question remains worthwhile, because the story that is being told, on an emotional level, strikes me as vague. I mean, what’s the problem that our heroes are supposed to solve here? That the wife has been abducted? That her role has been displaced by a robot? Or that the husband’s expectations might be raised here insofar as what’s supposed to happen in his marriage? Because I can’t help but get the feeling, things are at a low nadir because there’s something repugnant about doing nice things for your husband. Why, we can’t have that; those husbands might start talking to each other, and getting ideas!

If that wasn’t the intended message, perhaps there needed to have been some clarification. In both movies.

But the real problem, it seems to me, is that some of these wives are cultivating relationships with other women, that are more important than the relationships they have with their husbands. Even with women who are complete strangers.

I remember years ago when I was still living in Seattle, some of the other computer nerds who lived there had a joke they liked to tell. A young software engineer was being considered for a job, and he wasn’t able to set up an interview during working hours so he agreed to meet his prospective new employer at the Space Needle. He ordered an ice water for himself, and then he looked over at the next booth and saw none other than Bill Gates. He was so excited, and even moreso when he realized what a decent and approachable guy Mr. Gates was. They talked for a few minutes, and finally he worked up the nerve to ask Bill Gates for a favor. “I have a job interview, here, in a few minutes,” he said. “I’m terribly worried about how to make a good impression, and I was wondering if you could pop by a few minutes into it, and act as if you know me.” Bill Gates thought for a minute and said, “why, sure. I’m sure I could handle that.”

The interview proceeded as planned. About ten minutes in, Bill Gates was getting ready to go. But he made good on his promise, politely broke in and said to the young man, “Hey Jack, didn’t want to interrupt. Wonderful seeing you again.”

The young man said, “Gates! Piss off. I’m in a meeting.”

Seems to me to be an apt illustration of what’s happening in marriages like the one described in the above-linked article — the trashing of a person who’s supposed to be a compatriot, for sake of ingratiating oneself with strangers. It is, essentially, an exercise in making new friends — an exercise that, if it succeeds, befriends those who probably don’t make very good friends. It isn’t a problem with women being “uppity” or forgetting their place, or failing to show the proper subservience the Good Lord intended. It isn’t a matter of becoming a Stepford Wife. It’s an issue of simple human decency, good manners, and sharing your life with a person the way you said you were going to. And not wasting theirs. Socially, it really doesn’t take very much at all to make the point. A good-natured, cheerful smile, with a friendly “I don’t think that’s appropriate” can do wonders.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

An impressive list here.

Not feeling quite so smug now, huh gents?

Cassy tracked down another supposedly-courageous, man-bashing battle-axe. Yet again.

Teenage boys are idiots. And today’s American teenage boys – whom our culture holds in a sort of manchild limbo long past the age they need to be doing some sort of hard work and earning their keep – are even bigger idiots.

By the time a male is about 16 years old, he has the body of an adult male, an adult male with a brain under assault by a dramatic rush of hormones the likes of which he’ll never again see during any other period of his lifetime. Teenage boys are more impulsive and aggressive than any other group.

The man-bashing harpy followed it up, promptly, once she want through the paradigm-shift of realizing people were actually READING her asinine comments, with a “follow-up post.” This betrays the high cost of political correctness — once you’re being politically correct, now and then you have to come to terms with the idea that people are digesting what you tell them, and taking it seriously. And then, you have to go through this absurd motion of the time-honored “What I Meant To Say Was…” “follow-up” post.

I don’t know what the hell she said in her follow-up. I didn’t read it. Just sort of skimmed. But I felt compelled to enter the following snotty remark.

Teenage boys are stupid

More like…

It’s politically correct to say teenage boys are stupid

We can demonstrate my point, easily, by picking on another group far more cherished and adored, with equal measures of truthful critique…

Teenage girls are vindictive, petty and vengeful

Huh. Suddenly there’s another demographic that, perhaps, we should work hard at keeping away from guns.

Except my statement takes some balls. Yours just goes through the motions of requiring them, but in the end you’re just peddling a bunch of pap to make yourself better liked. And, by the way, better than even odds that’s how all this “research” came to be to help back up your point. The male of the species can’t cry his way out of a speeding ticket.

But if you think I was tough, wait’ll you get a look at what adorable gun-and-swimsuit pixie Cassy put together, because if you’ve read her for any length of time, you know this really hits her where she lives.

New rule here at The Blog That Nobody Reads: You can’t criticize me for the length of what I write until you’ve gone and read what Cassy has to say about man-bashing harridans who like to gloat and chuckle and smirk about boys being dumb. Because brother, if you want to find a lady who believes in what she’s saying, go no further than there.

These kinds of people — mostly women — bother the hell out of me. OMIGOD! Teenage boys are, like, SO stupid! They’re irresponsible! They’re reckless! YEARRGHH!

Can the people who come up with this crap, just once, come up with an original thought? Please?

Yes, teenage boys tend to be more of the daredevil type. Yes, they do stupid things sometimes and take stupid risks. They also tend to be exceedingly loyal and I’ve found them to be rather considerate and great friends. Unlike teenage girls, may I point out.

I had many more guy friends in high school than girl friends. Part of this was because I participated in a male-dominated sport (crew), but another part of it was that I wasn’t interested in having a lot of girlfriends. I had a few, but by and large I didn’t get along with a lot of girls. Why? Because girls are vicious, jealous, backstabbing bitches in high school. They’re two-faced and evil and mean. Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl. Teenage boys, at least, stick with their friends through and through. Even when they get into a fight, they’ll duke it out and then ten minutes later, be best friends again. So simple. So uncomplicated. No three hour conversations about who screwed who over first or why such-and-such’s boyfriend was MY boyfriend first and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Piss off a teenage girl and it’s never a ten minute fight. She won’t try to kick your ass, but she will try to ruin your life. She will poison every well, spread as many rumors as possible, and in general try to make your life as miserable as possible. I don’t care if saying this pisses people off, because it’s the truth.

There is much, much more.

I think Cas and I both ran on a little bit because this subject is real simple.

It comes down to this.

When you are allowed to say bad things about boys and not about girls, you’re going to hear more bad stuff about boys than about girls. Some of us who have weaker minds, somehow, think this means something. Those of us with stronger minds understand it’s a commentary on what we are and are not allowed to say, and doesn’t really mean a great deal more than that…other than that men and women are different.

Oh that, and…just to repeat…men can’t cry their way out of speeding tickets. And YES, this differential trickles into our insurance industry and anybody who tells you otherwise, is a liar.

…who really, truly, honestly think this is a man’s world.

Today I went shopping for razor blades. I was way more overdue for this than I usually am. Like, as in, shopping for razor blades a month ago would have been quite appropriate. That last session of shaving I did, Saturday morning, like, really hurt a lot.

Oh, and as a side note: I really like shaving with a mug. I like heating up the water to 212′ Fahrenheit in a teakettle, and pouring it through the shaving brush before swirling it over the mug soap. That’s one of life’s pleasures right there. But it does not work with a dull blade. Or two. Or three.

And so I went shopping for blades.

So anyway…you whiny women who live in Folsom. You think this is a man’s world. Consider this an invitation to go shopping for razor blades with me. Side by side. My girlfriend won’t mind, and neither will yours. Let’s go look at blades together, men’s for me, women’s for you.

And after that you can tell me all about how it’s a man’s world.

Eighteen dollars and forty-six cents plus tax, for a package of eight stinkin’ cartridges.

Now the skin on my neck won’t be raw anymore. But I have some new scabs on my knees. So go ahead, Amazons. Tell me another.

Wow, what a lot of passion. Wish it didn’t look so familiar to me. Found this write-up by Glenn Sacks, at Mens News Daily, which I’ll just go ahead and quote in full:

The website www.exrants.com has some interesting…well, rants from people about their exes. This one–Being Single Sucks and So Do Men–caught my eye:

Wanna know what blows? Being single.

More specifically, being a 32 (almost 33) year old divorcee (typing that word makes me want to vomit only slightly less than when I say it), single mom with NO prospects sucks.

As I lay here alone, aside from Peter and Phoebe (the beginnings of my soon to be cat lady collection), now is a good time to remember all of the GOOD things about being single.

In no specific order:

1. I can actually get some decent sleep at night. My ex used to snore so loudly that almost nightly I thought about killing him in his sleep. I’m not even kidding. I used to fantasize about smothering him with his pillow. Yes, it might be a little dramatic, but sleep deprivation at 2 a.m. does crazy things to a woman. Now I want to kill him all of the time 😉

2. No more copious amounts of body hair in the shower.

3. I get Tuesday & Thursday evenings and every other weekend off.

4. I can eat cereal for dinner and don’t hear the bitching that went a little something like this, “If it’s not meat, it’s not dinner”…

Ah, f*** this list. Who am I kidding? Being single sucks.

So what was really the problem in the relationship? A few possibilities:

1) He was (sigh) a man who worked no more hours than his wife did but still expected her to cook and clean.

2) He worked substantially more hours than his wife did (as is often the case), and thus expected her to do more cooking and cleaning than him.

3) Their house was messy and it didn’t bother him but it bothered her a lot. Thus where he saw no issue, she continually saw a crisis. She often asked him, “This house is a disaster–what are we going to do about it?” and he didn’t see a problem.

4) She is temperamental and emotionally immature (witness “almost nightly I thought about killing him in his sleep”).

Or some combination of the four above. Do readers have other possibilities to add to the list?

Definitely, #4. Maybe some combination of other things, but #4 certainly weighs in. This is not a healthy individual. So much bitching. So little definition to the bitching. He likes meat, leaves body hair in the shower, and in bed he…what, exactly? Exists? Takes up space? Breathes?

I’ve seen this a few times. Single mom, or bachelorette, is in her thirties and is preparing for a cat-filled life of spinsterhood.

I think this is an unfair burden we put on girls. We show them from birth how incredibly adorable they are, they get their ring of BFF’s in middle- and high-school, and upon reaching adulthood they’re convinced they can get along with anyone.

As grown-ups of both sexes know, it just isn’t that simple. Everyone can’t get along with everyone else. We studs get hit in the pocketbook real hard, and this anesthetizes us from the secondary lesson: We thought we could get along with someone, and we couldn’t. The same thing is happening to the women, but it comes as a much more bitter blow to them; some never recover. Seems to me that’s exactly what we’re looking at here.

I’m left wondering what a Dad should say to his son about this — the single gal who has all these reserves of bitterness, for men, and can’t explain why and might not know why. It’s not just a one-in-a-million problem here and there; it’s an epidemic. I might know a thing or two about that…

Yin·no·va·tion

Let’s give some background before defining this one. I came up with thirty things a guy should do if he wants to be a real guy, then I thought of a thirty-first thing. And well before that, I wrote at length about the Yin and Yang theory, which says, in a nutshell, that as people mature they have two distinctly different ways of gaining control over their surroundings. Let’s look into Yin and Yang and then revisit this thirty-first thing guys should know how to do.

Quoting from the tenth installment,

The Yang mature earlier…By the time they’re two or three years old, and probably earlier than that, they show a proclivity for achieving an emotional equilibrium with other persons present, which are usually their parents, before doing much of anything. They get lonely when they can’t do this. The Yin, on the other hand, fail to achieve this level of connection with persons in the vicinity and so they end up building things. After they have done something in solitude, then they may try to achieve this emotional connection now that they have a “token” to present. You might say the Yang child says “mommy and daddy, look at me” whereas the Yin child says “look at what I did.”

Should the Yin achieve any talent at communicating with people at all, they do this well into adulthood and they only do it when backed into a corner, finding it impossible to function in society while working in solitude, which by then is the environment in which they’re more comfortable. They would much rather be Dr. Frankensteins, cobbling together some monstrosity in a cobweb-covered laboratory somewhere.

The Yang end up frustrated with the Yin, and the Yin end up frustrated with the Yang. But ultimately, society as a whole only acts on the frustrations of the Yang, because they are more expressive. So as society matures, it becomes more and more Yang-dominant, at which time the Yin traits are thought to be disabilities, freakisms, abnormalities, handicaps.

And of course, there is no reason to think otherwise. Save one: Everything we have, we have because someone was a Yin. That includes the innovations most cherished by the Yang. The cell phone is a great example. Once you become accustomed to living your day-to-day Yang existence with a cell phone, it’s almost impossible to go on without it. And how did we come up with cell phones? A bunch of Dr. Frankensteins in a bunch of cobweb-covered laboratories came up with radio receivers, transmitters, protocols, error correction algorithms, liquid crystal displays…the list goes on and on.

The Yang being more expressive, some of them attempt to appropriate credit for these innovations; this is usually by means of the committee usurping credit from the individual. We just saw it happen with the Internet itself, in the form of that guy who was insisting this was a government accomplishment. I had to set up straight over at Cassy’s place when he made the claim…

ARPANET started in 1969. In 1983, TCP/IP was introduced. In 1996, the first image appeared. Hundreds of engineers spent thirty years and millions of dollars. You think Bank of America has that kind of patience? Most corporations don’t even keep their value for 30 years, much less do business on it. So yes, only governments can do that kind of work.

To which I replied…

Very accurate. You’ve clearly been doing your research. The dates are a little bit off, but other than that your encapsulation is almost a verbatim recitation of what actually happened.

At least, once the contributions of private industry are removed, with surgical precision. Which seems to be the case with whatever you’ve been reading.

The history of ARPANET is actually as follows…

Background of the ARPANET

The earliest ideas of a computer network intended to allow general communication between users of various computers were formulated by J.C.R. Licklider of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) in August 1962, in a series of memos discussing his “Intergalactic Computer Network” concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today.

Creation of the ARPANET

By mid-1968, a complete plan had been prepared, and after approval at ARPA, a Request For Quotation (RFQ) was sent to 140 potential bidders. Most regarded the proposal as outlandish, and only 12 companies submitted bids, of which only four were regarded as in the top rank. By the end of the year, the field had been narrowed to two, and after negotiations, a final choice was made, and the contract was awarded to BBN on 7 April 1969.

BBN’s proposal followed [MIT Lincoln Laboratory scientist Larry] Roberts’ plan closely; it called for the network to be composed of small computers known as Interface Message Processors (more commonly known as IMPs), what are now called routers. The IMPs at each site performed store-and-forward packet switching functions, and were connected to each other using modems connected to leased lines (initially running at 50 kbit/second). Host computers connected to the IMPs via custom bit-serial interfaces to connect to ARPANET.

So you see, it really isn’t a case of government fronting the capital and braving risks that would’ve scared off private investors. The risk was mitigated, instead, by orders of magnitude — start small, grow with success over time. And always, think critically as only individuals can do.

And no, private business didn’t borrow from what was innovated by the DoD or any other arm of government. It was quite the reverse. BBN came up with the cool ideas that were the foundation of ARPANET, and then being the first public-sector entity involved in this development, ARPANET appropriated all the credit — especially once Al Gore started flailing around for excuses for letting his ego get away with him in that interview with Wolf Blitzer, taking credit for “creating the Internet.”

Individuals innovated, committees brought people together to form standards for putting it all together. And then after something meaningful came of it, the committees took the credit for the technology, just like I said they always do.

There really isn’t anything to worry about here, unless we make the mistake of doing everything the Yang way. Which is always the temptation, because the Yang behave the way they do to get attention, and who doesn’t like to get attention?

But extremism will get you in trouble, because if everyone in human history acted to get attention and served no higher purpose, we wouldn’t have anything. That’s, if we’d be around at all, which we probably wouldn’t be because our prehistoric ancestors would’ve starved to death.

Thing I Know #62. Throughout history, very little of note has been accomplished by people who made a paramount of concern out of what others thought.

Now, it should be obvious to anyone even with a slight bit of experience working in a team environment, what exactly is the talent of the Yang. It’s communication. Empathy. Understanding what “the room” is thinking…which in turn is useful for assuming a leadership position, should the person so desire.

Trouble is, all these strengths melt away when people aren’t around. And so this pattern emerges: An exciting and capable new tool is built in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory; it needs funding and so it is presented to a committee; the committee is run by someone who, from birth, would not feel comfortable working in that laboratory. And so mankind’s biggest ideas, in order to acquire both inspiration and capital funding, have to straddle this huge divide between Yin and Yang. One wonders how far along we would be by now, technology-wise, if that were not the case. Maybe we’d have a Dysan Sphere by this point. Or maybe we’d be rocketing across the galaxy at supra-light speeds, hitching up giant tow-cables to the planets we find there, yanking them back over here, and grinding them up for our energy needs. Or something.

But we have to let the Yang run everything, even though the Yin actually build things. It makes the Yang feel good. They like to have everything working their way, and they talk so much it’s hard to tell them things sometimes, or to challenge their viewpoints.

So that’s what the Yang do well. How do you define the aptitude that is nurtured and manifested by the Yin?

This is the thirty-first thing a manly-man should learn how to do. It has to do with fitting things together, which out of necessity involves knowing why things do the things they do.

I remember back in the early 1980’s when computers started to become popular with small businesses. Looking back on it, what a comedy of errors it was. People would figure out this was going to be something big, and they’d go to classes to figure out how to work a computer. The class would then herd in 14 other interested computer using people, and they’d all sit down and type in the following:

10 LET A = 1
20 PRINT A
30 LET A = A + 1
40 IF A > 10 GOTO 60
50 GOTO 20
60 END

Toward the end of that first day, a lady in the second or third row would inevitably say “I don’t see what this has to do with word processing,” and the instructor said “we’ll be getting to that next week.”

This was a breakdown, something swallowed up in the Yin/Yang divide. With Yin and Yang theory, we now understand that if you excel at following instructions, you are likely to suffer serious handicaps in this kind of innovation…and vice-versa. They are mutually exclusive aptitudes.

Think about…electronics kits. Think about Lincoln Logs. Toggles. Legos. Tinker Toys. Erector sets. What do all these things have in common? Parts…do things. Previously-defined things. The assembly as a whole…that is undefined. That is up to you.

And the whole point to Yin and Yang is, that if you survey the socially-mature folks who possess all this aptitude with communication, you’ll find an abundance of discomfort with this sort of freedom. We take great pains to pretend this is not the case, because when we see someone knows how to talk with grandiloquence, we instinctively want to make them feel like they can do anything. But as we saw with those computer classes a quarter century ago, it just isn’t the case. You get this “just tell me what keys to press” thing.

It doesn’t mean they’re useless people. Not at all. But they tend to flourish when there are established procedures to be followed. They also tend to think — with people as well as inanimate objects — in terms of “supposd’a.” You press this button, that light is supposed’a come on. If the light comes on, they know exactly what to do next. If the light doesn’t come on…they’re pretty much lost.

And so Yinnovation is the ability to create solutions. It is, quite simply, the ability to assemble a complex thing out of simple building blocks, without the benefit of instruction. It is a complex aptitude. What happens here is, the tools (and parts) have these properties that are defined…the properties can be discovered but not changed. There is an objective to be fulfilled. The tools and parts have the potential — this is not a sure thing — to, perhaps, fulfill the objective. Maybe. Nobody really knows that yet.

And so the Yin have the capacity to chart their own course on this. They are McGyver. It isn’t guesswork; they have to understand why the light is “supposed’a” come on when you push the button, and if the light doesn’t come on, what might make that happen. How, when you make a drive gear smaller, you get less speed but more torque.

They live in a different world. “Sposed’a” doesn’t enter into it. Their world is one of cause and effect: If you stand on that end of the board and if I jump on this end of the board, then you’ll go flying.

And that is the thirty-first thing men need to do in order to be real men. You don’t get to drive a car, until you know how to change a tire. The pointy end of the lug nuts go inside…not because they’re sposed’a…but for a specific reason. Cause and effect. A manly man should know the reason the pointy ends of the lug nuts go inside. A manly man should know all the things that can make the “Check Engine” light come on. A manly man should understand what noise might mean what problem, and not be reduced to describing it to another manly man as “a funny noise.” That’s what women are for.

Heh…kiddin’. Have a sense of humor.

A manly man should come alive when there is a hardware project. A manly man should walk into a hardware store, doing the math…bicycle has two tires, I want each one suspended on a 3/16″ cable, each one with a slip ring, a small carabiner clip, etc. Bed headboard needs four bolts, each one will have two washers and two nuts, one to tighten and one to lock. Yinnovation: The component parts have previously defined properties, but how they fit together is up to you, and there are no procedures put together by someone else. You have to know how things work, or else you are lost. A manly man will look on any kind of project like this with enthusiasm and not with dread.

Credit to Natus Lumen. I’d offer a hat tip, but I am bound by the oath of the secret society to which I belong, in which setting I may or may not have learned about this.

Guide to being a man
Natus Lumen

Herein is a guide to being the epitome of all that is man, written by the truest form of all men: me. Everything I say in this guide is correct. If you disagree with me, you are very wrong.

If you are a woman, or any semblance, variant, or almost a woman, I command you leave now. This brings me to my first point. All sentences stated by a man should end with a period, and should sound like a command. The occasional Demand is acceptable, but only used as a means to say, “I’m in a good mood, so you only have to do this if you don’t want me to rip off your fingers.” Question marks are completely unacceptable, and are used only by the faint of heart and small of genitalia. These should never even be hinted by a man. Exclamations are nearly as bad. The exclamation point implies that you are surprised by something. A man is NEVER surprised. A real man sees all that is coming, but all that is coming does not see man. Therefore, a man should only cause the exclamation point to come squealing and thrashing from the shocked mouths of others. A man is allowed to yell, as a matter of fact, a man is encouraged to yell, but it should be a booming, roaring, inarticulate noise used only as a means to shock others. This is never followed by an exclamation point but should always be put in boldface font.

Secondly, you would do well on your way to becoming almost as manly as myself by noticing everything as soon as you see it. For instance, if you were half the man as me, you would have already noticed that I am clearly “Working,” as declared by the mood-indicator. Idleness is for ninny-boys. A man is ALWAYS working. It does not matter on what a man is working, but using power-tools will earn you steel-chain and nail points (as men do not eat brownies).

A man should never smell like anything. If, and ONLY IF, a man is intolerably-smelling, he may use a small amount of musk. Whether you are intolerably-smelling or not is determined by the American coin nearest you (yes, it must be American; other coins are sissies). If you put the coin under your arm and Abe’s/George’s/Franklin’s face changes to signal that he is sensing something highly unpleasant in the air around his face, then the odor coming off your body is deemed “intolerable”. Another important tip: NEVER use musk if it is spelled “musque.” This is completely intolerable, and is punishable by a life sentence to the prison that is complete humiliation and ostracism from the world of men. When combined together, the letters “Q”, “U”, and “E” are extremely effeminate. The letter “K” is very manly, as it gets the job done by its own damn self, and doesn’t need the assistance of two other letters to get its point across. It was also invented by the Vikings, a people among the manliest of all human races (but not THE manliest, as they evolved into Europeans). Even their women were more manly than most of today’s men. Also, brushing your teeth is very, very discouraged by all that is man unless you replace the word “brushing” with “shooting” and “teeth” with “those who are not manly enough to shoot others who are not manly.”

Never, ever cry. Ever. Tears have no place on the face of a true man, as they clot the rugged stubble that crowds the lower part of a true man’s face. The closest a man may come to crying is a rough, loud, throaty cough. Nor should you allow others to cry around you. Crying should make you want to punch he/she who is crying. This is acceptable, but avoidable. Violence is always the answer, but most of the time the man should never answer anything.

In order to look like a man, you will wear nothing except the skin of an animal you killed with your bare hands. You must have found this animal in a jungle, the deepest part of a large ocean, or a tropical savanna. The skin of another man is acceptable for this task, as irony is nothing short of awesome and highly masculine. A desert is also acceptable, but only if there is a jungle in the middle of this desert, and a 200-pound animal capable of 70 mph (note: not kmph. The letter K is very manly, but not when used in a European context. Miles are superior to kilometers, as a mile is bigger, and therefore better) in this desert/jungle. If you cannot kill an animal of this sort, you will wear plaid, and it will be covered in sweat-stains.

What else am I forgetting. That was not a question, by the way.

Oh. I know. How to live. You will live by one credo. That is a comMANd. The credo is thus: A man is NEVER wrong. If you disagree with this, you are wrong. This ideal trumps anything you have read thus far, and everything else in your life. Do not question this. Being right is the all-important rule of being a true man. You may occasionally state, “I don’t know,” to avoid being wrong. This should be avoided when possible and should, when necessary, be replaced by only a rugged grunt. Again, a man is never, ever, ever wrong. A man is allowed to change what is considered “right” and “wrong” because the only people who are allowed to judge anyone are those who are completely and interminably righteous, and a man has every right in the world to attempt to make his way on to this list. For a definitive list of those who are interminably righteous, contact me.

Follow the steps contained in this guide and you will one day become a rugged, face-rocking, ass-kicking, cock-punching, violent, awesome, possibly interminably righteous man, as I am. Being a man is not something that is easy, and nor is this guide all-inclusive. Discovery is the key to being a man, and so must you discover all the secrets for your own damn self. You may pass this advice to others, but only if you are manly enough to honorably mention the original creator of all those deserving of the privilege of the capability to grow a beard: me.

Run-on sentences are also VERY masculine. Nobody tells a true man when to shut up.

My own thoughts:

Agree about the question marks and exclamation marks, although I would modify this to say such devices ought to be used sparingly. In the verbal forum, Mr. Lumen is correct. A real man is like John Wayne. Oh, great horny toads, how that previous sentence is going to tick off the liberals; to which I would respond with a single word followed by a question mark: Why? What’s wrong with John Wayne? If the building was on fire, John Wayne didn’t yell that the building was on fire, he ordered everybody out. He very seldom asked questions. If the Indians were attacking the Alamo and he needed someone to throw him a rifle, he didn’t yell for a rifle, he calmly ordered someone to throw him a rifle. The only time I saw John Wayne yell in one of his movies, ever, was when he was negotiating with bad guys from a mile away, across a meadow. Negotiations brought to a halt, as in “Fill yer hand, you sonofabitch,” meant it was time for action. That’s the essence of manliness right there. Calmly handling a crisis.

“A man is ALWAYS working.” I don’t think we should go here. Our sisters have already tried this with the “woman’s work is never done” thing and it hasn’t worked out very well. It turns out women are human; they get sick and tired of working, and like to veg out on the couch. Men are the same way. When I’m showing off my manliness, chowing down on a steak I just seared to perfection on the grill and chogging down a cold brew, I don’t want someone waltzing out on the balcony and demanding, “I thought a man was always working?” Don’t need that kind of grief, Mr. Lumen. You said a man can see things coming.

On whether musk can cover up what may offend in a man’s bouquet, a man is going to leave it up to the ladies to make that determination. I defer to them here. I dunno if they’re going to go for just covering up with something out of a little bottle when a shower is needed.

“NEVER use musk if it is spelled ‘musque’…When combined together, the letters ‘Q’, ‘U’, and ‘E’ are extremely effeminate.” Yup, gonna have to go ahead and agree with you there, Tex. Can’t scare any wild varmints by threatening to hit ’em with a stique.

“The letter “K” is very manly.” Morgan K. Freeberg nods in approval.

“Also, brushing your teeth is very, very discouraged by all that is man…” I suspect we belong to different camps on this. The low nadir of surrendered manliness, to me, is leaving it up to your mommy to take charge of your personal hygiene. If you need to floss, floss. If you need better pitspray, use a different brand of pitspray. You figure it out for yourself, don’t leave it up to your sweetie when you’re about to do the mattress dance “uh, you should probably start brushing your teeth right before bed.” Observe. Infer. Discern. Take initiative. Make a plan and follow through. That’s manliness.

“Never, ever cry. Ever. Tears have no place on the face of a true man…” Yup. Women who say they are longing for a man who “isn’t afraid to show his feelings,” are liars. The truth of it is that crying men creeps ’em out. The crying man is like the nerd who stays after class to help clean erasers, or the American politician whose paramount goal is to apologize for things way in the past. People say they have unmitigated adoration for these things, and they don’t mean it. Really, it’s a logical impossibility because it professes unambiguous sentiments about a thing that is, by design, ambiguous. It’s simply a law of nature: People don’t show unbridled acceptance for objects that apologize for their very existences.

“In order to look like a man, you will wear nothing except the skin of an animal you killed with your bare hands.” Huhwha? C’mon…

“A man is NEVER wrong. If you disagree with this, you are wrong.” Yeah, well, I don’t go that far…but I would say if you’re running around looking for reasons to say you’re wrong about things, you are not a man and furthermore, you are a danger to anyone who would trust in your judgment about anything. Like they said in that cool war movie whose name escapes me right now: A man who thinks he’s going to die on the battlefield that day, will probably find a way to make it happen. A man who tries to find a way to be wrong so he can show off how willing he is to admit it, will probably find a way to be wrong. As for who is wrong, let the truth be your guide. Compromise isn’t always right just because it’s compromise. Like I was telling Kidzmom the other week, if one guy says humans breathe air and another guy says humans breathe water, you do NOT stick your face in the toilet fifty percent of the time. Truth is not loyal to people; the opportunity only exists for people to be loyal to truth.

“You may occasionally state, ‘I don’t know,’ to avoid being wrong. This should be avoided when possible and should, when necessary, be replaced by only a rugged grunt.” Yeah…well, in my manly life I’ve found day-to-day living is like algebra. This analogy defines exactly how I see manly thinking. You have to get all the unknowns on one side of the equal sign, and if you can’t get that first step done the rest of the solution process is hopeless. When it comes to trusting people, a man definitely admits what he does not know, to himself if to nobody else.

BUT — and this is key — each side of that equal-sign is as important as the other. So a man knows what he knows. That’s why liberals hate capital punishment so much. It isn’t that it kills someone…look at how they view vicious, murdering tyrannical dictators all over the globe, their positions on abortion, etc….they couldn’t care less about killing someone. It’s that making a decision and being sure about it. It offends the hell out of ’em. It allows their ideological opponents to make inroads on that “keep kids from getting hurt” issue. It gets the everyday middle-of-the-road soccer mom to thinking…hey, waitaminnit…if I let liberals run everything, my precious babums will be able to play on boring ugly playgrounds without skinning his knees or bruising his precious little head, so he can be abducted from said playground by some scumbag who is supposed to have been “rehabilitated.” We have to fry those creeps or else putting non-carcinogenic naturally disinfected fake rubber padding on the plastic slide is going to be futile.

And once the soccer moms realize that, the she-men lose votes. Because deep down we’re already programmed to understand this: REAL PROTECTION of precious things comes from REAL MEN.

“Being a man is not something that is easy, and nor is this guide all-inclusive. Discovery is the key to being a man, and so must you discover all the secrets for your own damn self.”

Okay then, here are my additions:

1. Don’t leave the house without what you need.
2. Take charge of the excursion, so you know what you need. Real men do not follow steps that come from others.
3. Own at least one folding pocket knife. Preferably more, but at least one.
4. Own a sharpening stone and a bottle of oil.
5. Drive a stick shift.
6. Know how to ride a motorcycle. Not a scooter. A real motorcycle.
7. Failing to produce results, but following all the rules, is a failure. Breaking a stupid rule to produce the desired results, is a success. If you forgot the key, go ahead and scale the damn fence.
8. Show some good judgment in figuring out which rules to break. You’re responsible for this as well.
9. Also, if you scale a fence and it hurts a lot more than when you were a kid, start working out.
10. When you move, do it by renting a truck. No “moving crew.” Manage all the tie-downs yourself.
11. Tie a bowline.
12. Tie a taut-line hitch.
13. Tie a clove hitch.
14. Tie a necktie, so it looks good.
15. Own at least one suit; two would be better.
16. Own a pair of leather work gloves. Really nice, form-fitting ones.
17. Own at least one pair of really-big-ugly work gloves, for moving all that stuff by truck.
18. Own at least one pair of fingerless gloves.
19. Own more work gloves than you have shoes.
20. Own, and know how to use, a rechargeable drill/screwdriver.
21. Own, and know how to use, a ratchet/socket set with at least 200 pieces. Take things apart. Put them back together again. Put them together so they actually work, and there are no “spare parts” left over.
22. Do something across a distance, as the Good Lord intended. That’s why males find this entertaining when the fair women-folk do not. Take up archery. Or target shooting. Or spit on a leaf floating in the river from a very high bridge. Even better, pee on it. Buy a remote control toy. One way or another, have an effect on something that is beyond arms’ reach. It is your desssssssssstiny.
23. Eat salmon. A man’s love of doing things by remote-control, and a man’s love of the smell of grilling salmon — these two things are the evolutionist’s nightmares. Women do not share these things, quite so much. This is proof that God exists, and He expects men to do certain things.
24. Also, do the opposite of the remote control thing: Catch things. If you suck at it, start practicing.
25. Do things, with things, to find out what’ll happen, when you don’t know for sure. C’mon, you’ve always wanted to know about that Menthos/Diet Coke thing. You know you have.
26. Know how to convert metric to English, and then avoid like the dickens having to do it.
27. Study history, both U.S. and European, then don’t talk about it.
28. Know how to play a stringed instrument, then don’t do it.
29. Make your heart pump faster. Bicycling, running, rock climbing — pick one. Then do it.
30. And the most important thing about being a man, by far: Admire the talents of your enemies. Like Patton did with Rommel. That, right there, is manliness.

Cross-posted at Cassy.

Got an off-line from Blogger Friend Buck about something interesting: Save the Males.

Feminism has flourished, many say, leading to a more enlightened, open, and liberated time. In her new book, “Save the Males,” syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker argues that this is, quite simply, a bunch of bunk. We’re more confused that ever when it comes to gender, she writes–and males, not females, often bear the brunt of the assault.

Ground zero, she argues, is the classroom. “Boys learn early that they belong to the ‘bad’ sex,” Parker writes, “and their female counterparts to the ‘good.'” In schools across America, she reports, boys are stifled, feminized, and drugged; curriculum content is gender-equitable to a near-absurd degree (“We’ve created a new generation of Americans who may be more sensitive, but they don’t know much about history,” she writes); and years of “dueling girl and boy crises” have morphed into a we’re-all-the-same dogma, ultimately translating into Brave New World-style games of tag where “nobody is ever out.”

This impresses me as something potentially interesting. Here and there people notice we’ve been watering manhood down, victimizing our boys, alienating them from the sense of manhood that God’s Will says they should embrace on the way to adulthood. Ms. Parker seems to be pointing out that our girls are becoming disoriented as well.

“Historians aren’t sure of the precise date,” Parker writes, “but sometime around 1970 everyone in the United States drank acid-laced Kool-Aid, tie-dyed their brains, and decided that fathers were no longer necessary.” The statistics here are scary, but not unfamiliar: America “leads the Western world in mother-only families”; 30 to 40 percent of American children “sleep in a home where their father does not”; and between 1999 and 2003, the number of babies born to unmarried mothers between the ages of thirty and forty-four increased by nearly 17 percent.

Speaking of boys being stifled, feminized and drugged — once again, we need to become aware of a hot new trend, or at least, the desire some have to create one. And it isn’t new.

It has to do with convincing men, somehow, that they should wear womens’ cosmetics on their faces…

“Guy-liner” and “Manscara” to enhance the eyes of the male in your life, will appear in Superdrug this week.

Yesterday, the company’s director of trading Jeff Wemyss insisted that its cosmetics – branded Taxi Man – are not just for transvestites.

He said: “These days you can be macho and wear make-up. If you look at people like Russell Brand and Robbie Williams, they both wear make-up and they are both very red-blooded men.

“Men are more obsessed with their appearance than ever before. There is no longer any pain in being seen to be vain.”

Mister T speaks for me here…

Get some nuts!! Rrrr!!

Cross-posted at Cassy.

You’ve got to read this thing from Rachel. It’s priceless. It’s about that thing we’ve known and loved for forty years now — here’s a profession, only X% of the people in it are female, therefore there are sexist knuckledraggers running amok — only this time it is the blogging profession. Yeah that highly-compensated coveted occupation…

The New York Times wrote about about the Blogher conference (it’s a “community for women who blog”! yeeeee!), which complained about “blogging’s glass ceiling” and how all these women bloggers are so powerful and creative and smart yet just can’t get taken as seriously as men’s blogs such as DailyKos. Which, who takes DailyKos seriously? That’s really the big question on my mind.

I’ve written about this before, and as ever, what makes me roll my eyes at the whole thing is the air of entitlement – I blog, therefore I should be taken seriously. The article mentions “top blog” lists by Techcult and Forbes and implies that it’s just wrong that more of these women bloggers aren’t on those lists, but almost every Blogher blog they mention in almost the same breath is a mommyblog or a diabetes blog or a romance blog. Is this that confusing?

Anyway, so the BlogHer chicks were upset about not being taken seriously, and then the fembloggers spontaneously menstruated when they noticed the article was in the Fashion/Style section of the Times. I would like to thank the writer of that post I just linked to for reminding me how important it is to use the F-bomb in moderation. Jesus. Also, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d find it easier to take the feminists seriously if they didn’t express their displeasure like this:

Yeah, those fucking laydeez are so heinous, they even took over the manly-man bathrooms!! And they’re such feeble-minded superficial silly bitchez, all they care about is “nurturing messages”, neck massages, and the trappings of femininity. LACTATION!!1!!!!11!1!! Why aren’t those bitchez at home taking care of the damn baybeez properly, anyway!?!?

Yes of course, that is exactly what the NYT was thinking. Pigs!

I have a confession to make: Sometimes, when I’ve a mind to skim through a blog or two before getting my day started, I get it in my head “This is a lady blogger day” and I skim through only the female-operated blogs. Cassy, Rachel, Toldjah, Michelle, Karol, Anchoress, Melissa, Neo-Neocon, Princess.

Why?

Because women put out an entirely different product. Their disclaimers, should they put in any at all, are much shorter. Simply put: A lady blogger can type in things like “this chick is messed up in the head” with no preamble. Guys? Heh…”Now, don’t get me wrong, I have long been an advocate of equal opportunity, and I know all women aren’t like this, it’s just that…” blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I’m one of the worst offenders, because friends and relatives read my stuff and it’s known my love life has been somewhat…tempestuous…

…I digress. The point is, I can only evaluate my own behavior on this issue, and I do not take bloggers less seriously just because they are bloggresses. Far from it. I exercise the most flattering brand of “affirmative action” — the kind that cares about the end results, and discriminates to get what’s wanted, not to showcase the discrimination. But then, if the next fella is discriminating the other way, avoiding female blogs, and avoiding any positive acknowledgment of them — what am I supposed to do about that? What the hell is anyone supposed to do about it?

Because, it should be noted, that is the focus of the New York Times’ bitch pitch. Not the number of women blogging, but the decisions of the readers as they peruse the blogs, and nominate their favorites for recognition:

There is a measure of parity on the Web. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, among Internet users, 14 percent of men and 11 percent of women blog.

A study conducted by BlogHer and Compass Partners last year found that 36 million women participate in the blogosphere each week, and 15 million of them have their own blogs.

Yet, when Techcult, a technology Web site, recently listed its top 100 Web celebrities, only 11 of them were women. Last year, Forbes.com ran a similar list, naming 4 women on its list of 25.

Two points, both painfully obvious:

One, if women can’t fail, they can’t succeed. That means, if each and every time the ladies are perceived by someone as having their clocks cleaned, we have to go back and do it over again, ultimately we’re all going to have to disrespect women and, more importantly, whatever “accomplishments” they pull off. In anything. That includes Danica Patrick. The sentiment will unavoidably arise that, ho hum, another woman did something wonderful and we’re all supposed to applaud. We’ll applaud, but nobody will mean it.

Two, if people are entitled to their own opinions about things in our society, there’s gonna be racism and sexism out there. Regulated or unregulated, pick one. But — if you want things regulated, and you want to somehow ostracize or expunge any notions that aren’t to your liking, I hope you don’t do it in the name of “tolerance” because what you’re advocating is exactly the opposite.

And then, if unregulated is the way to go, there’s no point to having conferences like this, or the New York Times pieces that cover them. But deep down you knew that already.

Cross-posted…Cassy.

Cassy has a great post up about a film clip, plus some tee shirt designs, flying about the innernets to educate the fairer sex about what towering klutzes and assholes we are.

And she raises a good question about what kind of she-beast finds this stuff funny, closing with…

Sure, not all women think like this, but enough do that it’s alarming. And it needs to stop.

This is where the prevailing viewpoint leaves the plane of logic and common sense: An exploding sub-demographic of women who delight in forced humor at the expense of men, is viewed as harmless, even charming; if anywhere there is a man who shows this much glee at ridiculing women, he’d be rightfully recognized as a misogynist, and maybe even dangerous.

I’ve told my share of “blond jokes,” but then again, I have wide latitude in figuring out where to draw a consistent line, since we are so permissive of womens’ humor at the expense of men, and so prohibitive of mens’ humor at the expense of women. I’d place it somewhere beyond snickering at one punchline, maybe two. Pent-up hostility is manifested if three or four come flying at you in rapid succession, and you’re still laughing, begging for more. That’s not healthy, to my way of thinking. And that seems consistent with the film clip. You watch the first two guys fall down, it’s still mildly amusing. By the time you’ve seen it all the way to the end (your “bumbling stupid asshole guy” count, FYI, is thirteen), you want to stop it and go on to something else. Maybe even feel a little nauseous.

If you’re normal.

But a lot of women aren’t normal this way. Ms. Fiano is making a presumption that a large segment among our females, is so deranged that they’ll watch the entire film clip, finding each bumbling boob falling on his ass just as hilarious as, perhaps even moreso than, the one that came before. Does she presume in error? I’m afraid not. I’ve met my share of “ladies” like this. To them, the humor never gets old. It’s always fresh. If it’s male, and it’s silly, and failing at something, it’s funny. If it hurts itself, it’s even funnier. The joke never gets old. Hah. Hah. Hah.

I’d say fifty percent, measured against the available-female population as a whole, is my limit for “alarming.” Up to that point, I can keep my silence on this, my son can go out and grab whatever girlfriend he’s gonna get, and his odds of avoiding this toxic venom are like the flip-of-a-coin. Above fifty percent, for his own protection I have to take him aside and turn him into a little bit of a judicious male chauvinist pig. “Most girls are like this, and you need to avoid them.” And, of course, don’t ever tell your mother we had this talk.

I think we’re just about there. Actually, I think we’re well about fifty percent — based on my experience from being available some four years ago, we’re in the nineties. Men who care about their sons therefore have to have a new “talk.” There’s too much social pressure to presume girls are “sugar, spice, and everything nice” — while, behind the scenes, most of them are watching clips like this and finding nothing wrong with it at all. The attitude that results is something we’d never tolerate in our boys if it was directed at girls; somehow, it can be pointed the other way and we think it’s just fine.

Is it harmless? You tell me. If you’re a married dude, if your wife cops enough of an anti-male attitude she can just make up her mind one day she’s “bored” or “unfulfilled” and you lose half your stuff. So when someone puts together a film segment of thirteen guys making fools out of themselves, to deliberately give women just like your wife a crappy attitude, how harmless is that exactly?

And who’s left getting married? Smart guys or stupid guys?

And so, as a sign-off, here is your link to the randomly-selected news story about men marrying later in life.

The researchers conducted eight meetings with 60 “not-yet-married” men in northern New Jersey, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Houston. The men were ages 25 to 33, and none of them were gay.

The researchers note that most people think it’s men, not women, who are “dragging their feet about marriage,” and they state “our investigation of male attitudes indicates that there is evidence to support this popular view.” The primary reason given by men for taking their sweet time: They can get sex without marriage more easily now than in the past. And they aren’t all that interested in having children anytime soon, which is of concern to the researchers because the biological clock is clicking on the women they will someday expect to mother their kids.

Yeah, the women who get a good ol’ horse-laugh out of dopey men falling on their butts. Well then, you just keep sloshing those hormones around and get used to waiting, cupcake. Watch some more film clips. And don’t forget to complain; there’s always someone willing to listen.

Another gem I discovered this morning perusing Cassy’s blog, which she picked up by way of Dr. Melissa Clouthier, was yet another fascinating Dr. Helen advice column. Quoting advice-seeker “Jim” in full:

Dear Dr. Helen,

I am 47 years old, never married (not gay) and have very mixed feeling about the notion of being married someday. I have known — socially — many women in my years, and have found many of them striking and engaging, strictly from a character point of view. Yes, many were attractive physically, but that is neither here nor there. I hold the state of marriage in very high regard and have two parents who held high standards to thank for that. But I am not attracted to the thought of being married. I am not against it at all (sometimes I daydream about it); it is just not a priority in my life and much as I would welcome a spectacular woman into my life, I don’t believe it to be very likely.

Here’s my question: Why do so many women find single men to be a social cancer? I am forever surrounded by married women who look at me like I’m a freak who needs to be “bagged and tagged.” What is it about single men that makes married women (never men!) interrogate us as to our continued bachelorhood and seeming refusal to “settle down?”

I will confess to you that most women scare the crap out of me. Sir Compton MacKenzie knew what he was talking about when he said, “Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men, but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.” The female of the species is deadlier than the male. Hell hath no fury…you get the idea.

I know I am not a male chauvinist pig. My mother made an effort to bring me up right. I have known several women, personally, who held position of power and did so with genuine class and integrity. My father made the effort to marry a woman who was, to say the least, not common.

But I am somehow not attracted to being in an intimate relationship with a member of a group of people (here comes the Freudian slip!) who seem to regard me as an accessory. Most women I know want children, but not a husband. They merely see a husband as an accessory, like a GPS, to make having a family a lot less burdensome. I have known too many women who so ulcerate in their desire to validate their uterus that they marry morons who ruin their lives. But I digress.

What is it about being married that makes women find single men so intolerable? You may make of this what you like, but I know I am not alone in my feelings. I would welcome the chance to know how you and your readership feel about the topic.

Some of the comments on this that piqued my curiosity and interest:

Dr. Helen replied,

The first reason is that the sight of a happy single man might be an inspiration to their husbands, for if their husbands are friends with single men, they might get fed some ideas. Let’s say that a husband is kept on a short leash by his wife, but every once in a while the guy gets a reprieve to go hang out with his buddies. The single men who are happy are a shining example of what the husband is missing.

I think that’s probably the low-hanging fruit. It’s obvious there is something to it, or at the very least, the married woman probably doesn’t have the single guy’s happiness in mind when she proclaims he must be bagged-n-tagged…never mind all the babbling bromides she might dish out to the contrary.

Dr. Helen continues:

In addition, the single man has the ability to be out dating all kinds of women and she may fear that he will fill her husband’s head full of fantasies that she feels she cannot live up to. Her husband could wonder what it is like to be free like his buddy and dating a variety of women.

This is slightly different from the first reason, and maybe it’s a stronger motive. A happily married guy isn’t going to look at his single buddy with his free-and-easy single lifestyle, nobody asking him to take the garbage out, drink out of the milk carton, etc. and say to himself “gee, I wish I could live that way.” But when the single guy starts dating the married guy might have some real feelings of wonder about the road not taken. Gals treat guys much better before marriage; it’s just a fact. At least, maybe not so much before marriage, but before that “are you going to go out in that?” moment. When he stops being a wild stallion to be reigned in, and starts being a lap dog to be scolded. Women treat us nicer before that point than they do afterward; and a guy who is enduring the aftermath, looking at another guy who hasn’t reached it yet and is still being treated with greater measures of compromise, respect, and that old feeling of camaraderie, is going to have some wistful feelings about it. Guys who protest otherwise are simply liars.

Dr. Helen has a final suggestion:

Finally, the single man might look like he is having too much damn fun. If other men see this as a possibility — that a single life is a good one — they might not need women so desperately and women who count on sexuality as power over men won’t have as much to work with: if men don’t care if they have a woman or not, they can’t be controlled and/or manipulated as well.

Back when I was single, I found there was a magic formula. Basically, you will slip on through a bunch of good looking women, none of them bothering to give you the time of day, if:

1. You erred too far on the side of demonstrated harmlessness, failing to show talent, strength, assertiveness or ability;
2. You erred too far the other way, behaving too independently, like nobody would ever tame you — and if she did, it would be so much trouble you weren’t really worth the effort.

If a single guy can strike a balance between those two, showing both ability and flexibility within the first fifteen seconds after meeting a lady — the sky is the limit. In other words, women have an instinct, a drive, to meet the wild beast and tame him. You see it in fairy tales. You see it when you aren’t single anymore…the lady is fascinated with what you can do well, but she is just a bit more fascinated with what’s missing out of your life. Not on speaking terms with your family, your car is really old, have a tax bill you can’t pay and haven’t been hooked up with the professional who can help you through a jam like that. Women tend to be enthused about getting hold of that jigsaw puzzle that’s missing a piece or two, and then filling it in. If it’s a complete set they’re less interested, and I imagine this is a predilection that goes all the way back to caveman days. Not so much evolution, and not really a desire to manipulate — it’s just that we all like to be needed.

Dr. Clouthier’s ideas have to do with the woman’s reckoning of what the aging single guy is doing there…and they came blossoming forward in bullet form:

The single men who reach a certain age, seem to get there for different reasons.
1. Socially awkward, inability to deal with women (and/or men), possibly late bloomer
2. Divorced, widowed and not wanting a relationship
3. Divorced, widowed and desire companionship
4. Player–just like playing the field, morphed from stud into kinda pathetic, eternal juvenile
5. Busy guy who just never made time for relationships and finds himself older and single and hasn’t made it a priority

I have to say, if this is really what’s motivating the married women who look down with disdain on the single guys, I find it somewhat…sexist.

Is Dr. Condoleezza Rice socially awkward, unable to deal with men, a late bloomer, divorced, widowed, a player, super-duper-busy? Maybe she is the last of those…a year from now she won’t be Secretary of State anymore, and I doubt she’s going to be coupling-up with someone. Granted, single middle-aged women do face a stigma of their own — it is different from the burden borne by single men — but not greater. From where I sit, it seems people have an uncomfortable reaction, then at some point say to themselves “well that’s what they used to call a ‘spinster,’ and I guess I’m over it.” There’s some speculation about sexual preference on both sides, toward the single woman as well as the single man. But the nagging stops in the girl department. Guys are at the receiving end of a bit more pushing, a bit more rude greetings at social events, a bit more matchmaking, a bit more…anything that has to do with manipulation. The subject of “Jim’s” letter. Being a broken thing that should be fixed. The spinsters can just go on their merry ways, but the bachelors, as the lady said, “need to be bagged and tagged.” And the socially-awkward thing — once the single girl has demonstrated that doesn’t apply to her, nobody ever mentions it again.

Hello, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. Haven’t heard of anyone calling you “socially awkward” lately…and I don’t think I will…

Yes, there is James Bond. I concede that point. And like Carrie, Samantha et al, James Bond is a fictional character. One that can be emulated, to some extent. But here’s my point: A single guy who really does try to emulate the single life of James Bond, as Cassy has pointed out, is almost the dictionary definition of the word “creepy.” Not so with the free-wheeling bachelorette who picks up her cues from the Sex in the City girls. She, quite to the contrary…is trendy.

It’s got to do with that thing called “choice.” You hear “woman” and “choice” in the same sentence, and it is the eight hundred pound gorilla. Can’t be questioned. When women choose to be single, it’s a choice…and too many of the folks who shape our social mores and customs, don’t see choice as a responsibility, burden, or recognize any obligation for people to make wise ones. They just see it as a privilege. The obligation, to them, is on everybody else to “respect the choice.” So we’ve entered an age wherein single women aren’t weird, in fact you have to serve some time or pay a penalty if you dare to advance the notion that they may be (even if one among them has given you cause to think so) — but the bachelor has some ‘splaining to do, as Jim has learned.

Cassy has something to add:

When women look at a man who is in his forties or fifties, a lot of things automatically go through their minds. To us, it shows a lot of issues and not very many positives. It may be a personal choice, but women are immediately going to start asking questions. Why is it that this man is unwilling to settle down and commit to someone? When you’re talking about a single man, it isn’t just about marriage. In today’s society, long-term committed relationships are just as readily accepted as marriages are. So it isn’t even necessarily a question of marriage, but of what is this guy’s problem that he’s unwilling and/or unable to commit to a woman? To women, it indicates a lot of problems: immaturity, avoidance of responsibility, fear of commitment.

I think, here, Cassy’s somewhat missed the point of Jim’s letter. Everything Cassy has said, might very well be true in this case and that one, but what is the practical point of violating these rules of etiquette to point it out right to his face? To say nothing of — if this was the motivation, “needs to be bagged and tagged” would imply some other maiden, happily single at the moment, would then be saddled with this bundle of problems. Could women really have so much hostility for each other, that they would push their single counterparts into marriages with guys who fear commitment? That must be the ultimate walking-death on the female side of the gender divide, being married to a fella who doesn’t understand what marriage is.

I think Cassy has hit on what causes the revulsion. If that’s the case, it isn’t logical or rational, because there are so many other bits of human chaffe who would hit the “needs to be fixed” pile at a much higher level than the single bachelor. Just for starters, there’s the starry-eyed schoolgirl who gets hitched up to the classmate who is so much fun to be around, and then after they graduate from the twelfth grade they’re up to their armpits in dirty dishes and diapers and there’s no money to do anything because her stud isn’t reliable enough to hang onto a job. The married ladies, who one would think would have so much to teach her, choose to fixate instead on — the 47-year-old single guy. Why is that? They think he’s more likely to “come around” than the schoolgirl is to admit she’s about to make a mistake, and back out of it? Or is Dr. Helen on to something there?

Cassy continues:

The man who wrote the letter to Dr. Helen sounds to me like he just got seriously burned sometime in his life, and is keeping women at an arm’s length to protect himself (avoidance + fear of commitment = single 47-year-old). These quotes say it all:

I will confess to you that most women scare the crap out of me.

…

But I am somehow not attracted to being in an intimate relationship with a member of a group of people (here comes the Freudian slip!) who seem to regard me as an accessory. Most women I know want children, but not a husband. They merely see a husband as an accessory, like a GPS, to make having a family a lot less burdensome. I have known too many women who so ulcerate in their desire to validate their uterus that they marry morons who ruin their lives. But I digress.

I personally think that’s a large part of the reason that many of these older men stay single: at some point in their lives, they were hurt, and badly, by some stupid bitch and have not been able to let those feelings go. So they keep all romantic interaction with women at surface level only, and tell themselves that they just don’t want to get married.

Having gone through this, I think Cassy’s on to something. But since my own divorce sixteen years ago, I must say I have been consistently shocked at society’s expectation for men to “get over it.”

It is significant, personal, financial damage. You aren’t supposed to get over it. You’re supposed to learn from it.

And for what comes next, I do not want to single out Cassy. She’s not guilty. But it has to be asked — all this passion to “make” the burned men “get over it” so they’ll become more available and flexible for the next generation of marriagable gals who need a supply of male stock from which to select…why does that passion seem to so rarely be channeled into rage and scorn directed toward women who aspire to exploit, humiliate, and generally screw over the men?

Condescension for the man who trusted too much, and is determined to learn from his mistake.

Scolding for the middle-aged bachelor who is determined not to make the mistake in the first place.

But nothing save for sympathetic chortling for the brittle bitch who brags about her two metric tons of cocktail dresses and fifty shoes, showing their husbands who’s boss by hogging all the closet space. Hey look, closet space is a pretty harmless issue. Lack of closet space, I can deal with. It’s the goddamn attitude problem that goes with it that men can’t handle. The closet space issue is just metaphorical.

And when the attitude problem is widespread and growing among countless millions, like dandelion seeds on a spring day, it has an effect on us. We marry later, or not at all. Once it becomes a ritual by which men are ordered to hand over money to women — not to help raise our kids, not to honor commitments we personally made to them, but simply to salve the guilty consciences of total strangers — it becomes an arrangement into which only the fools rush in. And, men being what they are, when society orders us to do foolish things in order to comply, we’re a little bit more sluggish to heed the call than the fairer sex. Some of us are going to be complete hold-outs.

And if marriage is destined to become more centrally focused on settling past scores on behalf of women who imagine their sisterhood to be slighted by perceived wrongs…and less focused on productive things like starting stable households, giving children a good start, dealing responsibly with creditors, etc….there will be more complete hold-outs. The average age of first-time grooms is going to go higher and higher, and women will encounter more resistance in persuading them to “settle down.” The social-stigma method of overcoming this, the scolding, the nagging, the tut-tutting, is going to become more and more flaccid and futile. Men will stay single, until the perceived benefits outweigh the perceived risks. That is simply the way intelligent people behave.

Maybe the time has come to ask why marriage is looked upon as so risky, from the male point of view. The risk of humiliation, the risk of being addressed by your kids by your first name, the divorcing, the ritual legalized theft, the legal fees, the bashing of the credit score, the ostracism in all walks of life. Trust me on this, gals: We aren’t just making it up.

And don’t call me jaded. There are guys out there who are much, much worse.

It sounds flabbergastingly condescending, but look at the clip. She’s saying treat your husband like a dolphin, which means…reward the positive and ignore the negative.

I have two beefs with women training their husbands:

1. In my experience, women enter into conflict with me by settling on what needs to be done, rather arbitrarily and — to my perception — almost randomly. What were our options? How did you decide we’re doing it? What steps are involved? These are the kinds of questions that are skipped altogether, before you have a cranky missus and a brute of a beau wondering what it is he did wrong.
2. If the resulting conflict isn’t settled, and it continues in a vicious cycle for too long, there isn’t too much time passing by before this becomes the woman’s whole reason for being: How is he going to piss me off today?

So the “let the nagging go” thing has some appeal to me. It takes care of the second of those two.

For the first, I recall the words of wisdom of one of my old bosses. Not to me, but to his wife. He & she had immigrated from India, and sadly, his sense of the gender roles in a household probably wouldn’t find favor with post-modern feminism. “Don’t worry!” he’d reassure her. “Whatever I decide to do, it must be for the best!”

I dunno if he thought that one through. But when you think about it, there is a world of wisdom packed in that statement. I’ve used it on my kid’s mom a time or two to get her head peeled off the surface of Planet Men-Are-Stupid, and properly affixed back on her shoulders on Earth. I’m the Dad; I don’t want him to get hurt any more than anybody else does; if he hadn’t done something to convince me he was ready to ride his bike in the street, I wouldn’t allow him to; so since I’m letting him do it, it must be for the best. So cool your jets. Calm down. Go inside. Sit down. Get a drink. Watch Animal Planet or something. Stop second-guessing. Quit yer goddamn yammerin’.

You’re willing to let a guy get you pregnant, you must be willing to trust in his judgment. If you’re willing to do the first of those without being willing to do the second, then your judgment isn’t exactly the cat’s meow either, so either way why don’t you mute it. Quit naggin’. Not chauvinism; just simple, durable logic.

Back to the interview. I think this woman’s ideas make a lot of good sense. I don’t know if she’s trying to put forth the appearance of talking down to men, making animals out of ’em, to bait the bitter (somehow married) feminists into buying her book. Maybe, maybe not. But watching other married couples, I’ve been unable to avoid entertaining the idea that perhaps some of these frustrated cranky married women are making some of their own frustrations in life. You nag someone, they won’t want to listen to you. You nag them every day, they’ll start to work pretty hard at avoiding you. You make a point to say nothing to them at all save for your next episode of nagging…well, hell. If they have so much as a drop of self esteem, you’ll probably never see ’em again. That isn’t being male, that’s being human.

I do not like nagging women. I don’t know if that’s politically correct, or even acceptable. It’s kind of an “if that’s wrong I don’t wanna be right” thing.

Rule For Living With Morgan #7. You call me on the cell phone, and my situation is more complicated than it was before you called, for whatever reason…and then you do it a second time…my cell phone is going to start having “problems.”

Sounds like a bit of a dumb idea to me. A fun marriage is one in which your wife wants to have sex with you. A miserable one is one in which she doesn’t, of course; and if she didn’t want to, but did anyway 365 times out of a sense of obligation, well, that would be just a tiny step up.

But what I really think of as a walking death, is the kind of arrangement that is much more realistic and apparently much more common: The never-ending power struggle, in which a shared interest in any given situation is thought to be an impossibility, and every hour of every day is a contest to see which “side” gets what it “wants.” Yech. So for me, the interesting part was halfway through the article:

“To be honest, I didn’t tell my friends what I’d got him until halfway through the year,” says Charla [Muller]. “When I did, they were just incredulous, with most thinking that I was quite mad.

“One girlfriend said I must never, ever tell her husband what I was doing in case he got any ideas.

“What they took issue with most was the timescale. Some could see the merits in offering their husband daily sex for a week, perhaps a month. But a year? It was unthinkable.”

Wow, I hope this isn’t what it looks like: Sex every day for a year would mean no “Do This Or I Won’t Have Sex With You” for a year. The surrender of a bargaining chip. If that’s the case…and I see no reason to think otherwise…there are a lot of married men stumbling around in sort of a hell-on-earth. Just going through the motions of actually sharing a life with someone, but in reality each new day is sort of a “What am I gonna get outta him.”

The article, it seems, is really just an advertisement for a new book Muller wrote. She’s becoming a Dr. Laura wannabe; the book is about her husband’s birthday present, and what they learned about their relationship during the course of the year. Well, it’s kinda tough to take the position that the product isn’t needed, huh. Pop open the article — there are other comments about what her dippy girlfriends had to say to her about her birthday-gift idea. The comments are biting, scolding, cutting. They aren’t comments that would come from wives who are truly happy with their husbands, at least that’s my opinion. Really, I think I’d rather live on a mountainside in a cardboard shack with a 3 lb. coffee can for a toilet, than live in a marriage like one of these.

You know the perfect analogy to this: The candy vending machine. You want something out of it, you put the dollar in, you get what you want out of it. Sounds metaphorical for a man having sex with a woman. But flip it around for a second. The woman has a dollar, and the dollar is her offer of sex to the man. What she wants out of him, for today, is anybody’s guess…Mother is coming to visit, the windows need cleaning, I need to go shopping. So she bargains. The machine is obliged to deliver the goods once the dollar is provided. If the goods aren’t forthcoming, the machine can’t have the dollar.

After awhile, two unhealthy realities set in:

1. The machine acts like a “machine” and loses its unpredictability. All the decision making is left to the “human” which is the woman. If you know anything about women, you know after awhile women find this boring and exhausting.

2. Ask a thousand office workers who spend their days in proximity to a candy machine. Do any of them have anything good to say about the machine? No. So a wife, in that arrangement, won’t have anything good to say about the husband. There won’t be any reason to think she would.

Just sayin’.

A brand new store has just opened that sells Men. When women go to choose a man, they have to follow the instructions at the entrance:

“You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are 6 floors and the value of the products increase as you ascend the flights. You may choose any item from a particular floor or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you CANNOT go back down except to exit the building!”

So, a woman goes to the Man Store to find a man. The 1st floor sign reads: Floor 1 – These men have jobs.

The 2nd floor sign reads: Floor 2 – These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.

The 3rd floor sign reads: Floor 3 – These men Have Jobs, Love Kids and are extremely good looking.

“Wow,” she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the 4th floor and The sign reads: Floor 4 – These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help with Housework.

“Oh, mercy me!” she exclaims, “I can hardly stand it!” Still, she goes to the 5th floor and The sign reads: Floor 5 – These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, help with Housework and Have A Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the 6th floor and the sign reads:

Floor 6 – You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Man Store.

It’s our policy to give proper credit on these, and even to jump on a search engine and untangle the complex histories behind particularly popular morsels that have been getting passed around the e-mails and web pages for a few years. But only within reason.

Anybody who wants to do the dirty work, send the fruits of your labors my way and I’ll dutifully note the identity of the chauvinist genius behind the nugget known as The Man Store.

1. Going with the crowd when it makes sense to do so; going against it when it makes sense to do so; leaving it alone when it makes sense to do so.
2. Taking advice from those who can state their cases in logical terms and who you know share your goals. Advice…not instructions.
3. Upholding the Morgan Rule #1: If I’m gonna be accused, I wanna be guilty. An identity of displayed and assured harmlessness, is an identity of eunuchs.
4. Asking the five W’s — who, what, when, where, why — when you hear those empty-headed magic words “supposed to.”
5. Engaging diplomacy when the language used is one of diplomacy. And when the language used is the one of horse heads in beds…engaging that.
6. A resolve to defend the weaker from extraordinary threats — but not from ordinary ones, or disasters of their own making.
7. Taking personal ownership of the fitting between Pillars I and II, and of the fitting between Pillars II and III. Know, for yourself, why you know the things you think you know, and why you should be doing the things you think you should be doing.
8. Anticipating for yourself what will have to be done; gathering your gear; putting it where you can get to it when you need it; maintaining it properly.
9. Learning how to maintain the car before you learn how to drive it. That includes changing the tire. Any machine you use, when you use it, the machine is responsible for the predictable behavior and you’re responsible for decisions — and maintenance. You push the button and the light is “supposed to” come on, that means you should know what the light means, so when the day comes that it stays dark you know something about fixing it yourself, or at least figuring out what’s happening.
10. Trust but verify.
11. Don’t get mad; get even.
12. Treating your allies with respect, like they’re adults. Don’t “urge” or “insist”; instead, lay down conditions. Communicate. Negotiate. Compromise where it makes sense.