Steak Day

It's been a very long time since I posted anything here. School has just been nuts this semester. Since I have a spare minute for the first time in months I figured it would be a good time to talk about stress and more importantly how I destress.

The most important thing you have to know about destressing is that different things work for different people. If something that somebody else suggested isn't helping you, try some different things until you find something that works.

Here's what I do: Every once in a while when stress is building up I'll pick a day where I'm home alone and declare it Steak Day. I go to the grocery store and pick out a nice big steak, preferably a porterhouse, and some potato salad. I bring it home, season it to my liking, and grill it to a nice medium rare. I then eat it usually while watching a movie.

It's a simple thing but the act of pausing for a breath and cooking a nice meal for just myself, doing something just a little bit self indulgent, centers me. Maybe Steak Day will work for you. If not good luck in finding whatever works.

black metal [no not that kind]

I have been craving a motorcycle for a long time. Fat boy like the one arnold schvanzisbigger drove in a terminator movie. Black prolly. The way he got this bike is he beat up some guys and stole it, but that is not my way. I actually have a piggy bank. It's a huge macho adult piggy bank with mostly quarters. A big jug from a water cooler. Hey I stole it so maybe I am kind of badass. Well, it was empty and labeled as leaky so they would have thrown it out anyway. But I did NOT ask anybody's permission dammit! So I am gonna sell off some audio cruft and put the proceeds in the piggy bank. Also gonna sell: an old antique typewriter, black metal. An old movie projector, metal and black. A microscope in blue chrome! No ok, it is black metal too. Hmm. Black metal that is not serving me traded in for really fun black metal.

So what does this mean? Each of the collectible things in my home had once been very important to somebody. Now they have only cash value for me. The people who bought them and used them with enthusiasm are gone.

Someday maybe my fatboy will be cluttering up somebody's garage. It could someday be worth more as cash than as stylish transportation. Circle of life or something.

read the instructions

Don't burn your foot while barbecuing.

No, really.

I bought a cheap smoker and made some bad ribs and some pretty good pulled pork.

In the process, I learned that I am not as patient and thoughtful as I though I was, at least not when there is burnt pig to be had.

I botched the burn-in time when you season the smoker. I got the impression that you oil it all up and run a fire through it. Need to do this before the next fire when there will be actual food in it. Well, yeah. True. But a made a fire bigger than called for and scorched the black paint off part of it. "A small fire, making sure no coals touch the edges" is what was called for. But hey.

So then a few fires later I act like I am getting the hang of things. I made some ribs that turned out pretty good for a change. But while I am doing that, I managed to burn my foot. Wait, it gets stupider. I blame mostly myself but the smoker is a bad design in a lot of ways. It is easy to have a coal pop out the side. A couple did. I flicked hot one off my new recycled plastic deck. Got back to work on the ribs and felt a discomfort on the side of my bare foot, suddenly hot, then burnt foot. Stepped on a coal of course. Blistered foot AND puckered blackened spot on nice new plastic porch.

Now I betcha the book for the smoker says not to use it on a questionable surface and not to do it barefoot. I bet the material safety data sheet for the porch 'boards' say not to grill on it. I bet I even glanced at them. So anyway.

I used to brag to Guys that I read the owner's manual before I plugged anything in. They would scoff and say "you're not a real man". Well yeah, I am a real man who does not want to blow up his new stuff. Why did I not pay attention to these fire issues? I guess it seemed so basic and obvious that it should just work.

No excuse.

A Step in a Different Direction

So the more Bob and I talk the more I realize that the things we tend to discuss are not necessarily men's issues per se, but human issues, albeit from a decidedly male perspective. Thus I think a change in mission statement may be warranted. I'll have to discuss this with Bob in the near future.

A Step in the Right Direction

So at Bob's suggestion I've been reading and very much enjoying "The Story of B" by Daniel Quinn. The underlying message is that the environmental problems that we as a culture are experiencing, are caused by two interrelated factors: overpopulation, and overproduction of food.

The basic laws of ecology state that if a population's food supply increases so does the birth rate of said population. Normally in nature this works because there is a finite amount of food. Therefor if there is enough food to sustain 150 deer, the deer population in that area, assuming no change in food supply, will always be roughly 150.

We as humans have broken this system by becoming producers of food. Every year we increase food production, and every year our population continues to grow. The next year we have to increase food production to feed all these new people. And so on and so forth until we run out of floorspace and have to start building up like Coruscant.

In any case, I came to my own realization while I was absorbing this message. All of the ideas I've seen for sustainable living, while they do what they are intended, will never catch on for one simple reason. At worst they are viewed by the majority as a step backwards for our culture, and at best they represent a step sideways. All the major changes that were ever adopted by humans, be they metal tools, electricity, automobiles, or telecommunications, required a lot of time, money, infrastructure, and elbow grease to bring about. So why were they brought about? After all weren't people able to perform the tasks they needed to with stone tools? Couldn't they see in the dark by burning candles? Couldn't they move around by horse or steam train? Wasn't the pony express a good way to get a message where it needed to go?

Of course they were. The things I have described here were all perfectly adequate performers in their intended purpose. The reason the change is adopted, is that it offers an IMPROVEMENT, real or imagined, over the old system.

Now I've seen a few different ideas of sustainable living models. Some are fairly high tech while others advocate a return to a hunting gathering lifestyle. As I've said, the choice as it stands right now is a step backward or a step sideways. Hardcore fundamentalists are the only people who will step backwards and intelligent people, who know that we're running out of time are the only ones who will step sideways (keep in mind the world's population is largely composed of morons, if you doubt this statement take a trip to your local Wal-Mart and do some people watching).

The answer, clearly, is that for a sustainable living system to be adopted on a wide scale it must represent an IMPROVEMENT over the current quality of life. People need to be tripping over each other to adopt this new system like Best Buy customers on Black Friday when a new video game console is coming out. Anything less is just a finger in the dike.

Now I know what you're about to ask: what's the solution? Well unfortunately I don't have one. I'm an historian, not a scientist, my specialty is in studying and interpreting the past, so that we might avoid repeating mistakes. Improving the future is the specialty of a different thought process than that which I possess. All I can offer is the above mentioned historical perspective on why change is adopted. As I said before, people will fight stepping backwards, some will step sideways and some won't. In order to really change things, quality and ease of life must improve if we are to effect a lasting change in our culture.

what's wrong with this picture?

So many years ago when I was unemployed...  I showed up at a corporate office for an interview.  One random person walking out encounters another walking in.  

"How ya doing?"

"Better now, I'm leaving aren't I?"

"I know, right?"

OK so if they don't wanna work there, why am I interviewing?

Then I thought about it some more.  At my previous job, I said the same kind of disgruntled things.  OK so if the old job sucks and the new job sucks...  The old thing about the grass is always greener, no not really.  What if your job sucks and so does mine, but if we switch, we'll both be happy right?  Well no.  Nobody likes their job.  Kids run off to join the circus, they don't run off to join the office.  If we all dislike working, why are we all still doing it?  

Maybe it's a lack of consensus, lack of communication.

It is hard to get off the grid.  Not everybody is really ready to take off and risk doing their art.  Having a manager to manage things for me is good.  Safe.  

Thinking about it.

Some of us lucky ones have a passion.  They teach dance or paint after work or on weekends.  Their day job supports them in what they really love.  So maybe I should just quit whining and do what I like when I can.  

A Brief History and Analysis of Military Ethics

Military ethics may seem at first like a contradiction in terms. After all isn't the object of war to beat your opponent into submission? Isn't a military commander supposed to use whatever means he has at his disposal to destroy his enemy's will and ability to fight on? It might seem silly to attempt to apply ethics in a situation where one is supposed to kill people and break things. I believe that the opposite is true. I don't think there is a single area of the human experience more in need of a clear-cut code of ethics than war.

Modern military ethics began in Europe during the middle ages. A class of warriors had begun to dominate the battlefield. We know them as knights but in France they were known as "chevaliers" (literally horsemen). It is from this word that we get chivalry. The knightly class was a fairly tight-knit community. The man you faced in battle one day might be sitting across the dinner table the next so it was important that certain lines were never crossed on the battlefield. Although chivalry changed and evolved over the centuries, a few tenets were permanent: women and children are off limits, don't hit a man who can't hit you back, and if your opponent is no longer capable of continuing the fight you should offer him a chance to surrender.

Although chivalry formally died out with the knightly class during the renaissance, it continued in practice until the 18th and 19th centuries. The last nail in chivalry's coffin was General William T. Sherman's total war doctrine in the civil war. This doctrine allowed the striking of civilian targets so long as they also had military value. Sherman's campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas are famous for their destruction of farms, factories, cotton plantations, and the mass liberation of slaves. In this way, despite not being able to stand and fight toe-to-toe with Lee, Sherman destroyed his ability to keep his army clothed, armed, and fed. Although I'm sure Sherman and Grant had the country's best interests at heart, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is my firm belief that the total war doctrine led to most of the atrocities committed in wartime over the last century and a half.

The code of chivalry was one of the primary influences on the Geneva and Hague Conventions. These were the first formally written, enforceable codes of military ethics which came about in the aftermath of the second world war. Although one would think that this would have ended, or at the very least, reduced the occurrence of war-crimes it would seem that the opposite has proven true. The last half century has seen more and worse atrocities than almost any other time in history. Even our own country is not immune. It would seem that we have done with the Geneva Convention what we do with our own laws: dissect them and look for loopholes.

It is this practice which has led to the mistreatment of enemy combatants in the global war on terror. The grey area in question has to do with the Geneva Convention's definition of a combatant. They must distinguish themselves from the civilian population by wearing some type of uniform and must carry their arms openly. The Convention also states that those who do not follow its rules are not entitled to its protections. Therefore, despite what the bumper stickers say, the way we have treated our prisoners has been completely legal. That being said, I believe that means that the Geneva Convention is desperately in need of an overhaul. War, tactics, and weaponry are constantly changing and evolving therefore the rules governing them must keep pace or they will be discarded by combatants on one or both sides.

Personally I am against the use of torture for the purpose of interrogation. I am against it because it is an affront to human dignity, and also because the information gained through torture is unreliable at best. A person can be tortured into confessing anything because everyone has a breaking point where they will say what they need to say to make the pain stop. Some people argue that we are justified in treating our prisoners this way because when our soldiers are captured they are treated even worse. To this I simply respond, if we do as our enemies do, why fight them? Treating prisoners humanely is one of the things that make us better than them. The declaration states that all men, not all American citizens, are endowed with inalienable rights. If we deny these rights to our enemies simply because they would deny them to us, then we are nothing but hypocrites.

"Language" people! Listen to yourselves.

Where did language come from?  I have some theories from people I respect and some of my own.  Read anything by Steven Pinker, it will make you smarter.

One good way to get attention is to clear your throat.  This is partly because a blocked airway means you are in trouble, and people who like you will want to help you.  Others may want to get out of the way if you are going to spew anything infectious.  Many animals feed their young by gorging near the kill and when they get to where the young are they hork.  If this is not the trend in your neighborhood, hey don't knock it until you've tried it.  Nutrients are where you find them.  [car seat crevice / extra crispy french fry post is for another day]  So anyway, this distinctive sound just cannot be ignored.

A young and therefore small mammal has a smaller ribcage / vocal tract.  The sounds it makes are necessarily higher in pitch than when it is older / larger.  A bigger animal sounds more threatening in general.  Why?  I'll tell you why.  From experience or instinct, our little minds just know that a bigger animal is stronger and can cause more damage.

Watch [ok listen to] people who know dogs.  When you want a dog to sit, the command is given in a low loud tone.  If you want him to come in the kitchen for dinner you speak in a high happy tone.  

Most mammals, maybe most vertebrates do this.  "I am gonna kick your ass."  Is delivered in as low a voice as possible and in a descending pitch.  "Are you gonna feed me?" is asked in a high voice with a rising inflection.  [as are most questions]  This one way we can tell if an utterance is an order or a request. 

These are some of the roots of language I think.  Along with a brain that can learn and reproduce patterns and create new ones.  Special shapes of tongue teeth and lips are needed, but hey evolution and gravity just work, ok? 

Now we can also fake this.  If you want to sound butch or harmless, you lower or raise your pitch.  This is why I cannot take keanu reeves seriously.  He always sounds to me like he is trying too hard to lower his voice and pretend he is his dad.

SPEAKING OF DAD:

Let's just say you are about seven years old.  You and your family just got home from a camping trip.  It was a new uncomfortable environment and you are really tired and vulnerable but you are home now.  You turn back the sheets of your bed getting ready for serious comfort and safety, but wait!  You see a spider in your bed!  You are startled and you screech because you are a small mammal.  Perhaps your step father has not read any Steven Pinker or this post.  [ok it was written 35 years after these events, wha-ever]  It is of course a very high pitched screech.  Now maybe YOUR dad would understand and work around it.  You are a kid who should not be bullied or insulted by adults.  But my dad... well I don't even remember clearly what he said or did but I was made to feel worse about screeching.  Because it sounded girly.  

OK...  the science part of this blog post again.  Girls are smaller than boys.  Generally.  Less upper body strength, smaller rib cage, higher voices.  Look at anime.  I don't speak Japanese, but call a random phone in china or japan ten times.  Receptionists and waitresses there speak in extremely high pitch.  Tradition.  It is just good customer service.  [disclaimer: I have never been anywhere Asian.  guys talk, you hear things.]  

OK I think I kept the whining to a minimum.  Are you smarter now?  

So here I am.

the GETTING TO KNOW YOU post

I tend to whine.  This blog will be a place I will air out some crap from my childhood I did not like.  But I am doing so with the intent of clearing it out and healing from it so that makes it ok.  Right?

I am 45 and a half.  I am fed up with watching guys abuse girls.  Well really I am fed up with people being mean to each other.  That is what prompted me to start this blog with Tony.  He and I had had some similar issues.  It happened to me it happened to him, let us just do what we can to keep it from happening.

I'd like to think I am somewhat worldly.  I have been in the air force stationed in alabama and germany.  Got to travel to london and paris and venice.  Just as a tourist though.  Maybe I am still a townie.  Wife and I bought the house I grew up in.  Got a good deal from my mom.  House is not haunted but my head is.  I have baggage.  

 

the Monkey and the Green Garden Hose... of Eden

HI!  This is from Bob.  Visualize Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller.  That is who I wanna grow up to be.

I like the following illustrative thought experiment.  I hope it never really happened.  I know this has been blogged a dozen times before and I don't care where it originated.  It goes like this:

You have a big cage with 10 monkeys.  You have a green garden hose.  You hang a bunch of bananas high in the cage and throw in a ladder.  Why would you do these things?  Just go with it...

The monkeys figure it out quickly enough and prop up the ladder and go for the fruit.  However, when the first monkey reaches the bananas, you spray the other 9 monkeys with freezing cold water.  You bastard.  Keep doing it in the interest of Science.  After a while, any monkey that reaches out for the bananas gets whacked by the other 9.   Sometimes somebody gets some bananas but they quit trying after a while.  You feed them, but not bananas.  [see there? you are not totally evil.] 

After this behavior is established, you take out a conditioned monkey and put a new one in.  Of course, the new monkey tries for the bananas, and the others do their best to dissuade him.  They might like to explain courteously about the water, but there is likely to be violence.  You don't have to spray them as often now and can go back to twisting your mustache with an evil chuckle.

Give it another week.  Take out another conditioned monkey and put a new one in.  Again, the new ambitious monkey gets whacked by 9 of the monkeys.  Maybe even the new guy whacks him.  Each week, swap out a new monkey.

OK so after about 7 or 8 monkeys, stop with the water.  Keep swapping monkeys 4 more weeks or so.  [This has been blogged with 5 monkeys but I heard it first from a guy with no shortage of imagination.]

Soon the cage holds 10 conditioned monkeys.  They are conditioning each other now, and you are saving on the water bill and on bananas.  Now have we learned anything Scientific or are you just a bitter old monkey squirter?

Well, the most recent monkey has a valid reason for not grabbing the fruit.  He gets his ass kicked.  He has no idea about the water of course.  He is just being pragmatic.

Here is the part that bugs me.  A lot.

The veteran monkeys who know How Things Are, are keeping the new guys down.  They also have no idea about the water.  But nobody gets no banana no how.  Why?  Why does this behavior persist?  {here it comes… I hate this next phrase.  I don’t hate much, but when I do, it is this next phrase.}

     Because that’s the way we have always done it.

If you don't hate that phrase, you are not a right thinking person and you are not like me.  Go away.  

There are social conventions that do work.  Sleep over here, poop over there, eat in the other place.  Drive on the right side of the road.  Why?  Because you don't get your license if you are too creative with lane position.  There is maybe something in history about horse carriages or swords and right handed people if you google the heck out of it.  But that is one I took for granted for a long time without fussing.  

OK so those stay.  But on everything else, think for yourself!

Have you tried cream cheese and jelly on a bagel?  You might get a squint from the waitress but try it.

From my pubescence or around then, I had the official Guy brainwashing about what was attractive in women.  Barbie doll, cheerleader, playboy bunny, not necessarily in that order.  But around 25, I started having my own preferences.  I like bigger women.

They advertise beer and trucks during football games.  The ads on saturday morning are for toys and cereal.  This has been happening all my life but I had not really thought about it until lately.  You are being brainwashed and not just by ads.  The govt art council or somebody got in trouble a while back for subsidizing sitcoms that had anti-drug messages in their plots.  They would not subsidize your show if it had drug content that was not negative.  It was not a written policy, very smooth.  [No I am not going to cite this or support my claims with research.  If you remember this, just nod and smile.  If not, let's move on.] 

"In a civilised society, it is the duty of all citizens to obey just laws. 
But at the same time it is the duty of all citizens to disobey unjust laws." 
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Take the monkey experiment to work with you in your head.  [Just in your head.(but if you can get ten monkeys into your cubicle farm, I wanna work there too.)]  You will start seeing chimps everywhere like in that ad a while back.  There will be something that jumps out at you as "that's the way we've always done it."  Choose your battles.  If the conventional way works, fine.  Don't change things just to stick out.  But if you see a stupid convention based on outdated issues, challenge it.

A little about me...

I figured a good way to start my entries would be to tell the condensed version of my life story. So here goes...

I was born in Concord, New Hampshire in 1983. For the most part I had a fairly happy childhood. By that I mean that I was raised in a middle class suburban family and nobody beat me up or molested me. My parents divorced when I was eight or nine years old. I had a strained relationship with my father from that point on and it never really recovered. More on that later.

When I was seventeen and a junior in high school I enlisted in the New Hampshire Army National Guard. This was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. The army taught me strength, self discipline, attention to detail, and provided something I had been sorely lacking for a long time: good male role models. I learned a lot about myself and about being a man in the five years that I served, but by 2005 I had begun to resent the level of control the Army had over my life. I transferred to the air force side of the National Guard (which is technically still the military, but only just barely) and served another three years giving me a grand total of eight years time in service when I was honorably discharged in November of 2008.

While I was in the process of transferring I did something naive young soldiers often do: I married the wrong person for all the wrong reasons. More on this later. The one positive thing to come out of my marriage was my wonderful son, who now lives with me full-time and visits his mother on the weekends.

When my son came to live with me I quickly realized that at my current level of education it would be impossible to make ends meet. I went through four or five different jobs in the space of a few months and every single one ended one of two ways: either I couldn't make enough money to survive, or I couldn't schedule my work around childcare arrangements. It was at this point that I made the decision to go to college. I am currently enrolled full-time in a teacher-preparation program and hope to someday teach high school social studies. In my spare time I play guitar (badly), read like it's my job, and I've recently discovered my love for renaissance faires.

Well that's all for now. Some of the issues above will be explored in their own separate posts at a later date simply because this is my first entry and I prefer to keep it short and sweet.

Is this thing on?

We're here to explore men's issues.  But what does that mean?  Quite simply it means any and all topics important to men.  What qualifies us to soapbox about men's issues?  Absolutely nothing.  We mean it.  Nada.  Zero.  Zilch.  We're not doctors, or psychologists, or behavioral scientists.  We are just a couple of dudes with some ideas and an Internet connection.

About our ideas:  you may not agree with everything we have to say.  For that matter you may not agree with ANYTHING we have to say.  That's fine.  One of the cornerstones of our philosophy is that every man should be free to think for himself and make up his own mind on every issue.  Dissent is okay with us.  Hell, we'll even go so far as to encourage it.  If you think we're way out of line on something, call us on it.  We'll hear you out.  You may even change our minds.  Or maybe we'll change yours.  That's what this blog is all about:  a community of men helping each other to be better people.  Sometimes that means serious discussion of major philosophical issues.  Other times it may mean somethings silly, like "why are farts funny?".  But whether serious or silly these are the issues that are important to us, and on some level, to all men.

So that's our first rant.  Hopefully it's the first of many.  Thanks for reading.