Thursday, April 17, 2008

• Currently Reading Sissy Nation: How America Became a Culture of Wimps & Stoopits By John Strausbaugh see related

  Think about it

  The average American male probably can't:

  -change a tire.  That's what AAA is for.

  -change the oil in the car.  That's what Jiffy Lube is for

  -build a fire.  Something kids used to be able to do by accident.

  -tie a square knot.  "How do you get a square from a piece of rope, dude?"

  -fix a dripping faucet.  That's what plumbers are for.  You think it's only women calling those handy man services these days?  Wrong.

  -read a measuring tape beyond 1/4" increments.  Maybe because we don't have money called 'eighths'.  But that's okay.  Now we have talking tape measures and dummy tapes with all the little fractions right there on the tape.  Just watch a guy trying to measure something in 1/16ths or less.  The finger counting each tiny line is the give-away.

  -wire a simple light fixture.  Again, call the 'handy man'.  Soon those guys will be making $50 an hour just like plumbers and electricians, for doing stuff grandma could do if she wasn't afraid of falling off the chair and breaking a hip.  Oh wait.  They do make $50 an hour already...

  -whittle a toothpick.  Whittle?  Do you know anyone that whittles?  Go anywhere where there are at least a half dozen guys and try to even borrow a pocketknife.  Unless at least one of them is over forty, chances are you'll be out of luck.  And big street knives made for 'shanking' a 'banger are not what I'm talking about.  Why is that guys don't carry pocket knives today anyway?  I remember when every kid over six had one.  Oh yeah, that's right.  These days a kid with a two inch pocket knife in school ends up on the evening news flanked by guys in black jackets with SWAT in big white letters on the back and riot gear.  Guess I answered that one for myself. 

  -sit in a quiet room for ten minutes with nothing but his own thoughts without going insane.  This is because he has no thoughts.  This is because there are no quiet rooms anymore.  This is because you're no longer allowed to use words like insane.  That would be insensitive.  Chances are, the only thing he would do is break something, deface something, or start yelling for the heck of it.  Kinda like a big gorilla in a cage.

  -think of a good story to tell their kids at night before bed.  That's why we stick a t.v. and dvd player in their room instead.  There once was even a thing called Dial-A-Story, where a kid could call up and listen to a pre-recorded story before going to sleep.  Isn't that sweet?

  -discipline his kids.  I just wanna be his buddy.  Besides, I'm too tired/drunk/busy to do anything more than either send them to mom or occasionally explode and dump three weeks of bottled-up aggression on the kid for the grand offense of spilling their juice cup or some other minor offense.

  -seem to remember when baseball was getting as many other kids together as you could find in ten minutes, grabbing whatever kind of ball that approximated the size of a baseball, a few gloves, and a bat, and heading to the nearest open area.  Oh, heck no.  Where's the uniforms?  The shiny gear?  The four umpires?  The red-face coach who fantsizes that he's actually heading a MLB team?  The parents with .44 Magnums aimed at one of those four umpires for calling his kid out?  You mean, you can actually play ball and have fun without all that?  Surely not.  Besides, Joey from down the street isn't much of a reference on my son's college application.  When's the last time you even saw a 'sandlot' ballgame?  Nah.  They're inside getting fat pretending they're A-Rod or Dave Ortiz on the 52" Flat Screen.  At least they're safe there, right?

  -see why carrying a 'nine' in their droopy pants doesn't make them tough at all.  Here's partly why: right now in Iraq there's a popular trend among the guys that actually have to go out and do the foot patrolling.  Tomahawks.  No, not the cruise missile.  Not those sponge things at Atlanta Braves games.  Real ones.  Wicked looked things.  Right out of some Lord of the Rings battle scene.  Guys are carrying them over there, and they keep them right out in full view.  And you know what?  They scare the bat snot out of the punks in the insurgent groups.  Know why?  Because even though they're punks, they've got one thing right that we don't.  Guns don't make you tough.  Spraying bullets from a distance, or calling in an air strike, are something anybody can do.  When you actually look a guy in the eye, when it's hand to hand, knife to knife - then you find out who's tough.  The guy that's willing to say, "Yeah, I'll get right up to you man.  Close enough to whisper": that's the guy you don't want to mess with. 

  You want my personal theory on why so many guys still join the military?  Because it's one of the last places where the average American male feels he can prove to himself that he's a man.  I'm not just talking about chest-thumping machismo here.  I'm talking about being able to test yourself, where nobody's going to coddle you and have parades over mediocrity.  Where if you feel good about yourself it's because you've got a good reason to.  Where your actions matter.  Does the government use that to manipulate young men to unethical and immoral ends?  Yup.  And it's a real tragedy.  But unless we're willing to put a little risk back in life and teach boys how to actually live, then don't complain too much.  It may be that the ones that manage to survive and keep their sanity intact may be the only real leaders we've got left.

  But, in the interest of egalitarianism, here's a list for the womyn:

  The average American womun:

  -can't sew a button back on.  There you go, right off the bat wanting to put women back on the frontier, in chains and pregnant.  Uh.  No.  I just mentioned a button.  Calm down.  It's just that guys never were all that good at it.  Women used to be.  It would be nice for at least one half of the race to remember just how to put them buggers back on.  Besides, I thought you were all about proving how you're just as smart as men?  So now in terms of buttonology, you're now just as dumb as we are.  Yeah, that's progress.

  -freaks out when her kid cries.  I mean, go into a panic attack.  I get the whole mommy thing that favors the soft touch while dad supposedly is the one who says, "Oh quit crying and get up".  But now it's Call the Ambulance!  My kid has a bruise!  Call the doctor, he has a rash!  Gimme antibiotics!  Do an X-ray!  And why don't we have universal health care to pay for all of this because my poor baby is suffering!

  There was a time when one of the ways you identified a kid was by all the scrapes on their legs.  I can remember climbing trees and getting into a few where I stopped and found myself thinking, "It didn't look this tall from the ground.  I think I should have stopped about five branches ago."  Now mom sees Johnny in that tree and dials 911 on the cell, screaming for a fire truck to come get her little baby down.

  You got yourself up there kid.  Get yourself down.  You're failing science class because you don't pay attention or do your work, and you want me to tell the principle to move you to a different class because the teacher said something mean to you?  Shut up. Do your work.  Quit crying about it.  No, I am not going to be your lawyer pitted against your teacher.  You want a car/new shoes/X-box?  Get a job.  Go mow lawns.  Shovel snow.  Sell burgers.  Wash dishes.  I already clothe, feed, house, shuttle, and care for you in a thousand other ways you don't even know about.  $200 sneakers ain't listed under the list of my responsibilities as a parent.

  -doesn't understand why unit prices are important when shopping.  For all your vaulted expertise in the area of consumerism, you still don't know what that second price on the shelf means.  Personally, I think this is the real reason grocery bills are going up these days.  Not ethanol. 

  -thinks a nightclub is actually going to be the place to meet the man of her dreams.  See, unfortunately, the reverse actually is true.  Men probably can find the woman of their dreams there.  Pretty.  Shallow.  Low self-image, which makes here easy to control.  Desperate.  Willing to take her clothes off for virtually no commitment in return beyond a promise to use 'protection'.  So life if still unfair for you.  Which really is a shame.  But then again, you can't expect otherwise when you refuse to face the fact that a place where people go to get drunk and find sex  probably doesn't hold good odds of finding someone who won't do the same thing just because he has a ring on his hand.  But hey, you never know, right?

  -can't shoot a gun.  Is afraid of guns.  There was a day in this nation where anybody dumb enough to trespass on the farm while the woman was home alone with the kids got a chestful of buckshot.  Now guns are icky, scary, evil, and "Gosh that thing is loud!  Don't they make them quieter?"

  -can't think of a single lullaby to sing to their baby.  Don't worry, they sell neat little machines at WalMart that sing to them instead, and even project cute little pictures on the ceiling.

   

  BTW, most of what is on these lists is interchangeable.  Okay, I'm done.  For now.

   

  Decline-of-Western-Civilization Moment

  1.  Apparently we now air the disgusting details of our collapsed marriages as a divorce tactic via YouTube.  Three cheers for the new media, eh?

  Actually, in a way, I can sympathize with what she's doing.  She's at least partly trying to appeal to the public's sense of shame (or rather, her husband's).  But I've got news for her: it is the very act of Youtubeization (my phrase, a nickel every time you use it), and others of its kind that have helped eliminate the very concept of shame to begin with!  So in a sense, she's just picked up a shovel and joined in digging the ground out from beneath the very thing she's hoping will enable 'justice' to prevail.

  Dig fast, lady.  Time's running out.

  2.  I will be the first to defend the idea that trying to compartmentalize our humanity into physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual components, thinking that they aren't all part of an integrated whole, is dangerous and harmful on both a personal and community level.  The church is probably just as guilty of falling into that trap as anyone else.  But today I find this story:  The Biggest Loser: "I Am A Whole New Woman".

  No.  You are partly 'new'.  Congratulations.  It's just a shame that we're all raving about your physical triumph, but left to wonder about whether you've invested much in what will actually still matter five minutes after that glorious new body is fertilizing grass.  But I won't blame you too much.  It's not easy for that t.v. camera to capture the beauty of a soul.  Boobs, butts, and abs make for much better viewing.

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