House of Eratosthenes

1. Light the grill
2. Assume the position, tongs in hand
3. Immediately feel guilty; recoil in horror from the machismo
4. Wallow in your feelings of guilt, since that’s what makes you a good person and stuff
5. Write an article for Slate or sometthing
6. Reach up and flip your bangs to one side of your head, again
7. Somewhere along the line, do something that has to do with getting the meat cooked
8. Or, don’t, instead just go wherever your wife sends you, to get a pizza
9. Clean up your mess exactly the way she tells you to, and be quick about it
10. Stay out of the way

My way of doing it:

1. Grill that fucker, with dry rub, sauce, or just by itself
2. Eat it

I like my way better. Way better. It has to do with grilling tasty meat, whereas the gelding’s whiny treatise gets all bogged down in “less inclusive eras” and such. I like my way better because it has nothing to do with eras. It’s era-neutral. Come to think of it, a lot of other people besides me find appeal in that, it isn’t just era-neutrality, it’s million-years-neutrality. Make meat edible and tasty by putting heat underneath it; mankind could’ve done — did do — that anytime.

Cavallari Miss C.J. lowers the beatdown on snowflake:

You mean an era when men took responsibility and women let them take on their God-given roles as protectors and providers because studies show that when guys have responsibilities and commitments to others, they actually excel and achieve and actually DO something with their lives? Those same roles that liberal feminism has selfishly taken away from men because of some made-up crap about oppression and victimization that they STILL won’t shut up about?

This just bulls-eyes the problem. Rather than doing something with your life, go all “activist”-y — get exactly what you and your movement want, and still not shut up about it. Isn’t it completely obvious what’s happening here?

I’ll go ahead and say it: Men like the grill, because like the characters in The Godfather, it reflects real life. In real life, you can maintain and gather your tools, expose yourself to flame and danger, and get something done…which will have an immediate reward involved, for yourself and for others. Or, you can just talk about it all day. Pretend that you’re all ready for the challenge, when it’s really the furthest thing away from your enfeebled hipster mind, and that the only hitch in the giddy-up is that the challenge isn’t ready for you. Or, it’s not quite right in some way. Emits too much carbon. Isn’t gluten free. One way or another, you’re not getting anythig done, but you’ve got this fantastic excuse.

And I find this most telling:

Paging through photographs of my years in grad school recently, I came across one in which two colleagues and I stand in a semicircle around a kettle grill. Though my eyes are downcast in the image, I’m not sad. Instead, I’m studying the burgers in front of me, and I’m happy…This picture captures so much of what delights me about grilling and so much of what embarrasses me about that delight…Gathered around the coals with beers slung low, we’re all but enacting a myth of the American man, telling a story in postures and poses. No longer mere Ph.D. students, we have become bros…It’s not that I think we’re doing anything consciously sexist. Friends who were there that day remind me that we were actively making light of cookout customs even as we were participating in them. I suspect that everyone in the photograph identifies as a feminist. Yet the three of us look suspiciously like characters in a commercial, one where masculinity itself seems to be for sale.

He calls it a “myth,” yet friends remind him “that we were actively making light of cookout customs even as we were participating in them.”

This is when you know you’ve been educated beyond your hat size. When you start to use mockery to reject the reality nature has made available to you, and replace it with your own.

Men are men, women are women. Flame is hot, and meat is tasty. And as part of a trend that endures and will continue, until we’re all gone and long afterward: Work is done better, more efficiently, more decisively — more often — by those who operate within reality, accept it for what it is, define it, recognize it.

And those who play these games of pretend, tend to get that done but not a whole lot else.

The ones that do have jobs, usually have jobs that don’t produce anything. The exceptions to this, produce things that other people don’t actually need or want, at least not enough to willingly spend their own money to get it. These are very rudimentary tests to apply; it was only a short time ago, that just about everybody passed them, made products and services other people would willingly give up their hard-earned money to buy. But you can’t operate in that circle without recognizing an improperly supported girder as improperly supported, or an incorrectly tied knot as an incorrectly tied knot. Or, a man as a man, a woman as a woman, cooked meat as cooked meat.

Creampuff doesn’t seem to get it. “Grilling makes me feel like a real man, and that makes me uncomfortable” comes across as a bug, and not a feature. That’s what it is, a bug. And not exactly an accidental one. This is the sort of bug that is “coded” by a “developer” who, in the moment, is feeling pretty smug and smart about making the bug. This is not a rarity. Among the newbies, it’s a common mistake to make bugs this way.

I’n school I was “that guy” who actually knew how to grill things, WITH ONE HAND TIED…uh…to a beer bottle.
Multiple women repeatedly invited me to get laid,… a lot.
IN FAIRNESS: It Was a recently turned co-ed “Woman’s College”. !0% male, and HALF of those were gay.
I’ve often been “that guy”who actually knew how to grill. *sigh* even TOFU (Pro tip: expect 85% shrinkage) for some of the “committed feminist chicks”.(It was the 8os)
Bless all those girls who liked them some protein.(one way or another) from men who could stick to the basics. I think it fair to say I’ve NEVER even been MISTAKEN for a feminist, or “male lesbian” by any other name.
- CaptDMO | 08/08/2015 @ 06:27
Ye gods what a pussy.

And a grad student you say? I’m shocked, shocked I tells ya!

Bonus hilarity: I’ve been in umpteen seminars full of manginas like this. Every single one of them considers himself a Very Dangerous Revolutionary who will Overthrow The System any…minute…now.

Reminds me of John Scalzi, bragging that his daughter benches more than he does.
- Severian | 08/08/2015 @ 07:55
Personally I never had the Alpha experience with women reflected in Capt or Sevs comments, but Alpha-level skills in grillin’ kept me full of steaks, burgers and other delicious tidbits when others in college were subsisting on ramen and Totinos. Friends regularly supplied me with meat just so I could BBQ something for them. The ‘Q’ ran in a foot of snow too. Passersby would stare in surprise, turning to envy as whiffs of smoke hit their nostrils. There were times complete strangers would offer gifts of beer or cigars (there was a cigar store nearby) just to get morsels. Those were the days.

Now my apartment complex bans any and all grills. They use a false excuse that city ‘smoking’ ordinances prohibit them from allowing flames on the porch. I’m the envious one as smoke wafts from the slummy apartments on the left and housing on the right. Strangely, the city tobacco ordinances don’t seem to have an effect anywhere else…
- P_Ang | 08/09/2015 @ 03:55
That sucks, P_Ang… and it’s utterly predictable. It gives them badfeelz, so they ban it for everyone and call the problem “solved” – until the next new hotness comes along to melt their precious snowflake worldview.

A normal person avoids things they dislike in favor of things they prefer. In an abnomral person, that preference just happens to be getting the power to decide what other people ought to like and dislike.

Pick a topic, there’s a group of scolds and humbugs trying their damndest to ruin it.
- nightfly | 08/10/2015 @ 13:16

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I Like My Way of Grilling BetterSaturday, August 8th, 2015

I Like My Way of Grilling Better
Saturday, August 8th, 2015