Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The entry that snagged the fifty-fifth award Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) is delivered via the Counter-Feminist…I’ve bolded it:
This is a man’s world only in a metaphorical or superficial sense. It is not a “male dominated” world imposed on women. Rather, it is a world built on the common expectations of men and women. What some call “patriarchy” has been just as much a creation of women’s traditional expectations as men’s.
Coincidentally, this is exactly what my eleven-year-old son and I were talking about on our way to playing disc golf yesterday. He wanted to know more about Thing I Know #26…
There really aren’t too many things in the arena of human existence louder than a pair of women recognizing each other at a Starbuck’s coffee shop.
I explained that what women really are, is this: The personification of civilization. And civilization runs on protocol. (“Protocol,” we’d already discussed, has a number of meanings that apply to cocktail parties, foreign relations, computer science, and other things; but it always means “A set of things upon which you agree, that are observed so that you can communicate other things on which you do not agree.” My definition.)
That is the female role. With women and no men, protocol is established, codified, enforced, and the blessings flow from that; but things outside of protocol, go undone. With men and no women, there is a lack of protocol and anything that requires protocol, likewise goes undone.
This liberates women from certain things that burden men. A little girl, for example, can make a lot of noise and a little boy cannot; girls are adorable, they can get away with it. Sure, if she makes enough noise, eventually there’ll be a smackdown. But the leash is much longer. Expect silence from a boy, and get something else, the line’s already been crossed. Expect silence from a little girl, get something else, it’s free entertainment for awhile. Aw, isn’t that cute! My son hates that part. But as I pointed out, that’s really a double-edged sword. Don’t feel too abused, because we got the long end of the stick on that coffee shop thing. When you’re old enough to grab a coffee, you’ll go in and grab one, and if you see one of your pals there you can go on about your business after a simple nod. “Hey Bob, how’s it goin’ buddy?” Maybe a howz-the-wife-and-kids if you’re feeling really talkative.
You don’t have to make that whooping sound.
A woman sees another woman at the coffee shop, protocol requires her to behave as if this is a real event. It requires the kind of reaction you’d show to…cancer finally having been cured. No, you have to think on a bigger scale yet: The world, somehow thrown out of orbit, now somehow having been re-aligned. If they once had occasion to see each other regularly, but no longer do, a hug is also required. Imagine if women greeted women at the coffee shop the way guys acknowledge other guys; just imagine that. That would be a slight. That would be a “dis.”
Other women would find out about it.
It really is quite out of the question. That’s protocol for you. And this is why, if women made absolutely no decisions at all, the world would be a truly dreary place. Men are utilitarian creatures. We fix stuff; we do that. We are “libertarians” by nature. That usually works pretty well, because this is mostly a libertarian world.
But not completely so. Protocol is a good thing. There are too many things you can’t do without the protocol. And so we value the opinions of women. But here’s the deep, dark, dirty secret, and I fear putting the Big Reveal on this one, will get me in more trouble than discussing TIK #26 ever could or will:
We’ve valued what women have had to say for quite awhile. Well before suffrage.
For example, what is a mud room? You think, in a world in which men made all the decisions, we’d have had such a thing as a mud room? No, we would not. Things like mud rooms, antimacassars, doilies, and separate buildings for horses came into use as observations of protocol, and these protocols came about because your great-gramma had a helluva lot more to say about where great-grampa put his muddy boots, than you’ve been led to believe.
And that’s why women are so incredibly loud when they’re at the coffee shop, and they recognize someone. And that someone is just as loud. “Oh, how ARE you?? So good to SEE you!!”
There really isn’t anything human beings do that is any louder. But don’t bitch about it. You’re looking at the reason the rest of us, man and woman, have any capacity for communicating with any others among the rest of us. Whatsoever. Don’t believe me? Work in an office full of only-men sometime.
My son had a question I thought was pretty funny: “What would happen if men greeted each other in a coffee shop the way women do?” Oh gawd. Do not go there!
I told him that would be off-the-charts weird. Oh and one more little thing…you’re not going to tell your teacher or your mother about this little talk, are you?
Just observing protocol, you know.
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