You load 16 bags…

Like all manly men, when I go shopping (and have buttered scones for tea) I come back with a lot of bags, and these bags must be brought into the house in one trip if humanly possible. That means that I might carry any number of bags weighing any amount. Because regardless of the bulk and weight, to make multiple trips is a sign of weakness. 

Well, my wife has leaped in to help me out! Or maybe she's just tired of crushed loaves and broken eggs. Because she got me the Click & Carry.  

What is this strange device? 

The Click & Carry is nothing more than a heavy plastic handle made for heaving bags around. The top twists open, the handles of the bags are inserted, and when it clicks shut the bags are, as it were, reduced to being a single bag as they are hefted by a single handle. Clever! 

You can hoist it by hand; you can sling it over your shoulder (it has a comfort gel strip where it meets your shoulder to keep it from digging in and keep it in place). 

A few of these and you can easily get a week's worth of groceries for a family of six on your person. You may not be able to move, but you can do it! 

There are, of course, a couple of caveats for the purchaser. 

1) It only works with strapped or handled bags -- no paper bags. I know some paper bags have handles, but I never trust them. It will work with cans of paint, as seen on the label.

2) The Click & Carry is thick and strong, but that means it itself adds to the weight. Probably less than a can of beans, though.

3) Because you have bags slung together and hanging on your person like humungous Christmas ornaments, your groceries might still get crushed. But your rep with the other dads will not. No guy wants the shame of being a mere "two-bagger."

4) The product was seen on Shark Tank, so it has a label to that effect. But also...

5) Once again we see tribalism in the Certified Women Owned label on the packaging. Nothing against women in business, but who cares? It tells you nothing except they may have gotten SBA loans and other preferences men couldn't get, and so the company could be propped up despite the product being crap because a 51% stake is owned by someone with two X chromosomes. I believe Jeremy Boreing of Jeremy's Razors should have Certified Man Owned label on his product packaging.

6) Caveman that I am, I'd say that it just figures that a woman would invent a product that helps one go shopping, but I maintain that this product is more helpful for men. Men have the upper-body strength to really put it to its maximum usefulness. 

So the bottom line -- Click & Carry is clever and it works. Get a few and bring in so many shopping bags from the car in one trip that you look like a monster from The Dark Crystal. The other men may actually applaud. 

Where is the love?

Sometimes I wonder how humanity survived the eighties and the nineties. Not because of nuclear war or novel diseases or alien invasion or even Madonna. Rather, because men reached an apogee of confusion with women. 

A small sampling of pop songs of the era:

• Michael Penn: "No Myth" 
• Stone Temple Pilots: "Sour Girl"
• Marshall Crenshaw: "Mary Jean"
• Mark Oliver Everett (A Man Called E): "Looking Out the Window with a Blue Hat On"
• Deep Blue Something: "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

All these songs show a man in confusion about a woman, unable to understand what she wants, except she doesn't seem to want him. I'm sure you can add many more to this list, some by the same artists. 

The more I thought about it, the more it appeared to be a running theme. These are not just breakup songs; those have been around forever. They aren't even angry songs; there are plenty of those. These are songs where the male is in love, but baffled about the disaster befalling him.

Traditionally popular love songs fell into the categories of Desire, Devotion, or Desolation: I want you, I love you, I lost you. The songs I'm thinking of are a subset of the last. Torch songs can be found anywhere, but usually the torch bearer knows what's happened: she fell for someone new, she had enough of my garbage, she decided to trade up, whatever. But beginning in the eighties, and especially in the coffee-shop nineties, men were getting utterly gobsmacked by these women. She's leaving and I have no idea why this is happening.

I think there are some reasons these kinds of cris de coeur arose when they did. For one thing, after women's lib (as it was called in the seventies), men started to wonder what women actually wanted from them. Kind and sensitive? Witty and adventurous? Gentle and loving? Or was the old strong and silent still what they liked the most? Confused men trying to be what their women wanted made for cases where no one could behave like themselves, so the guys couldn't grasp why nothing ever clicked and everything just fell apart one day. 

Another possibility is that couples moved much faster into intimacy than they had in the past, giving the illusion of solidity without the actuality of it. Not surprising that one person in the relationship might be much more committed than the other, thinking that, having made it to home plate, the couple had achieved something solid. 

Traditionally the subsequent broken heart in such situations would be the basis of female torch songs, but by the eighties we heard it from the boys, who had a sense they had screwed up but more of a fear that they were screwed up.  

Anyway, that's my theory of this subset of the breakup song -- the What Did She Want? song -- that arose in the eighties. I know there are more than I listed above, and maybe examples that preceded the era mentioned. I'd be happy to hear your additions to or even rebuttals to this theory. It won't break my heart.

When is Men's History Month?

I demand a Men's History Month. We're a minority in America (49.6% of the population are women) and we need to stand up and be noticed. 

And who knows? Maybe if there is a little more respect for the men in our culture, they'll stop putting on women's gym clothes and trying to pretend they think they're girls so they can beat the snot of out ladies. 

Of course, the argument is that men, especially white men, have all the power in the country and so they don't need any recognition for their accomplishments. As one of the white cisgendered oppressors, I say to that: Nuts! If we have it so great, why are men almost four times more likely than women to commit suicide? 

But let's get back to sports for a moment, because the just-completed Women's History Month likes to shove the famous 1974 Billie Jean King/Bobby Riggs tennis match in the Houston Astrodome in our face every year, and it ought to be addressed. In fact, except for women's tennis, which it publicized, I think it's done a disservice to other women in sports in the long run. 

I have no doubt that the match was honestly won by King; moreover, I don't care. Bobby Riggs was a washed-up 55-year-old man when he played that match, and his opponent was 29. Riggs had retired from professional tennis 11 years earlier. The last time he'd won a major, Harry Truman was president. Sure, he was shootin' off his mouth, saying he could beat a female opponent regardless of her age, but that was all in service of his main mission: to Promote the Career of Bobby Riggs. And in that event, he succeeded admirably. 

Meanwhile, on Earth, a man of competitive age beat both the Williams sisters at tennis in 1998 -- in back-to-back matches. The Williamses claimed to be able to beat any man ranked under 200, so Karsten Braasch of Germany (ranked #203) obliged. The pack-a-day-smoking Braasch beat them 6-1 (Serena) and 6-2 (Venus) while drinking beer. Sure, this was a funsies match, and no one involved was too caught up in the result, but then again, how different would it been if they had? Maybe not a lot. Serena was always a ferocious competitor (a trait that served her well, but also led to some John McEnroe-type hysterics later in her career), and I can't believe she took it easy on Braasch. 

The Riggs/King match, though, made it seem more plausible that a woman could beat a similarly able man at a physical challenge, when in fact this not true. Sure, there are plenty of women who could beat me any anything -- I'm not proud, or competitive, or athletic -- but they could not beat a man at the same level of ability. Which is why they are being viciously routed by jerks who claim womanhood but have the physical advantages of manhood. 

We're not celebrating those dudes in our Men's History Month. We're celebrating the ones who gut it out every day to do the right thing for those they love, who show honor and courage and deal squarely and honestly with everyone. Those are traits men respect, traits we need more of in society. 

Miscellaneous science stuff.

It's our Tuesday random science feature! Of course, we don't do a regular science feature on Tuesday or any other day. That just shows how random it is! Probably determined by Brownian motion or something. Anyway, here's stuff. 

1) The Can

Today's first item is about the age-old question: Do women really take longer in the can than men? How much longer? And we find that a groundbreaking study back in 1988, woefully ignored by the so-called Nobel Prize committee, answered this question: 

The study, conducted in cooperation with the Washington state Department of Transportation, concluded that the standard 50-50 ratio between men's and women's public toilet facilities is unfair.

[Researcher Ahn] Tran established that it takes men an average of 45 seconds to use a public facility, compared to an average of 79 seconds for women. The study thus recommends a new standard involving a 60-40 ratio of women's to men's toilet facilities.

So there it is! Of course, we know it's just a wee (ha!) tiny part of the real problem women face. If the whole difference was 34 seconds, it wouldn't account for the tremendous lines for women's rooms that exist in places like theaters where no line at all is seen for men's rooms. There is more to it.

If we acknowledge that when a lot of these venues were built, equal space was allotted for men's and women's rooms, that still meant a big plumbing gap -- you can fit a lot more urinals onto a wall than toilet stalls. But even then, we're barely getting into the nitty-gritty. 

When men go to the public can, they go alone, and unless they're up to something shady, they get out as fast as possible. That's why we so often forget to zip up. We're running. Women, on the other hand, still treat the sacred grounds of the ladies' loo as a place to gather, to chat, to fix hair and makeup, to criticize their dates, and so on. Those gals aren't getting out of there in 79 seconds. And even if they're not actively taking up a stall, the sheer number of bodies in the room at intermission means the line is going to have to wait until someone leaves to advance. 

If we really want to give women what they want, their restroom facilities should be planned and built first, and everything else added as secondary -- the restaurant, theater, stadium, whatever it is. Everything is just an addendum to the toilet. 

The Justice Bader Goldberg Memorial Bathroom and Stadium. Is that so much to ask?

2) Animal Testing?

My wife bought some pet wipes for the dog, because sometimes he gets dirty paws (but not dirty enough all over to have to bathe), or he needs his ears cleaned out, or he just needs to have a little stink wiped off him. Toddler wipes work okay, but dogs usually can use something stronger -- and sometimes need to. 

But this was one of the screwier things I've seen of late on packaging: 

Look, I get that your heart is in the right place. You love animals and we love our pets. But seriously -- if you didn't test these pet wipes on animals, you know what that makes my dog? Your test subject. 

I think just this one time you could test a product -- a product meant for animals -- on an animal before you release it to the public. What do you think you're doing, manufacturing COVID vaccines?

📡📈🔭📱🔬

That's all the science we have today! Join us when we randomly do something like this again, if ever!

Bath or shower?

Commercials sure like to show gals soaking in the bathtub. I wonder. My mom always considered it akin to stewing in your own filth; she was a shower-taker exclusively and encouraged same among the rest of the family. My wife has no interest in baths -- she just wants to get clean, not make a big production out of it. (She saves the big production afterward, for her hair.) 

Me? I used to like a good bath sometimes. Like, when I'd worked out too hard and everything hurt. Or when I drank too much and had one of those killer hangovers, the kind where you have stopped feeling nauseated but want to sweat the remaining booze out of your pores. A bath could be very therapeutic at times like that. These days I don't drink and barely exercise, so I pretty much stick to the shower.

I do remember a bed & breakfast we stayed in years ago in which the bathroom had no shower. It had a huge clawfoot tub with shower attachment on a hose, so you could wash your hair and I guess spray off any filth you'd been stewing in. I loved it -- as a moderately big guy it was great to be in a tub that fit me so well. (Shower/tub combos always skimp on the latter.) My wife wasn't so keen for reasons cited above, but she did admire the decor. 

The last one to use an actual tub in our house was the dog. Izzy had gone beyond the friendly confines of the backyard, into an area where runoff goes from the pond, and became blackened from the chest down. Of course it was very cold outside, so there was no bathing him out there; I had to de-mud him just enough with old towels to get him inside to the bathtub where I could do the rest of the job. Normally he gets a good scrub-down once a month at the groomer, but here his perfidy resulted in an unscheduled and more thorough bathing. Puppy, thy name is mud!

I guess I would tell the would-be homeowner or apartment hunter that it's always good to have a tub in case of such emergencies. You never know. One time when I was a kid, Mom and I picked up a big feast from a restaurant and drove it home -- or rather, not all of it, because a loose lid led me to a bath of chowder in the passenger seat of the car. Fortunately it was not hot enough to cause serious burns, but getting into the tub back home and letting the cold water do its thing may have saved me from worse injury. 

Well, one way or another, you gotta get clean sometimes, a sometimes a bath is the way to go. Just don't forget the ducky, and the soap. 

Look out, lads!

Watch out, all y'old bachelor types, you lay-about boyfriends, you unattached eligible males! Today is Leap Day, which also means it's Bachelor's Day:

Bachelor's Day, sometimes known as Ladies' Privilege, is an Irish tradition by which women are allowed to propose to men on Leap Day, 29 February, based on a legend of Saint Bridget and Saint Patrick. It once had legal basis in Scotland and England.

Sometimes confused with Al Capp's Sadie Hawkins Day (which falls on November 13), Bachelor's Day is a way to acknowledge that Irishmen are terrible at getting themselves to the altar. You know the old joke about why Jesus must be Irish:

☘ He turned water into alcohol;

☘ He lived with his mother and never married; 

☘ He spent all his time hanging around with his pals.

Of course, when you consider that Irishmen were mostly surrounded by Irishwomen, who fight harder than the third monkey trying to get on Noah's ark, there may be some reasons for this. (Ha ha! Funny joke, honey! If you're reading this, my wild Irish rose, don't kill me!)

To encourage the straight single Irishmen to reconsider any plans to hide amid the shamrocks until this thing blows over, allow me to remind you of something, courtesy of Gab's AI generator:

Fake gorgeous lassie, you say? Well, I say that it shows that even artificial intelligence, which cranks out bizarre and nightmarish images by the ton, is obliged to make Irish ladies look like the bombshells they are. 

So this year, boys, run a little slower, hide in slightly more obvious places, and give the gals a chance to make an honest man of you, all right? Your mother will get over it. 

The trouble with men.

A friend of mine under his nom de nette posted a comment that he believes may be the most popular thing he ever wrote:

Wife: Open up about your emotions

Husband: [Does so]

Wife: [Disgusted and nervous about the needy weakling she married]

He's been getting a steady stream of Likes for it, and it isn't even the post, just a comment he made on a gag post about marital relations. It seems like he hit a nerve.

Men of my dad's generation were of the old "never complain, never explain" school, a.k.a. "one mood, all the time." It's not to say this was true for all men; comedy characters through history have shown men acting crazed, hysterical, weird, silly, terrified, bombastic, and in a word, overcommunicative. But those aren't usually the men we want to be when we grow up -- at least, not in front of wives and children. We want them to know they can rely on us, that we won't go to pieces in the face of danger or lesser trouble. Part of assuring them is putting on a brave face -- maybe just in the hope of convincing ourselves we are brave -- and part of the brave face means not opening up about our emotions. 

But there's a big downside to that of course, the most ghastly being that while women may attempt suicide more often than men, men succeed more often. It's not even close. It's not even in the same league. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says that "In 2021, men died by suicide 3.90x more than women". News reports about suicide statistics make it sound like the perpetrators are all trans kids or heartsick Mesdames Bovarys, but most are middle-aged white men. Even in a wealthy and relatively peaceful nation like the United States, men can feel desperate from failure, betrayal, loss, or just medically diagnosable depression, and there's a good chance no one will know until it's too late. That's partly because no one wants to know. 

Women are not blind to the fact that the men in their lives may not be sharing all their feelings. But they don't always want us to. I have a friend who's a terrific lady, very funny, checks all the boxes for proper modern liberal attitudes, and she once shocked me by saying she would lose respect for her husband if she ever saw him crying. I know she's not alone in that. 

There is that protection thing. It's a legitimate concern: Women who want to marry men want to know the man will be there for protection. Maybe the biggest threat to women is other men -- sorry to admit that's probably true -- so it's crucial to have one of her own to beat the snot out of some guy who makes trouble. So this husband had better not be some crying chickenhearted loser. 

What this means, though, is if she's asking for you to open up about your emotions, what she really wants is to know that you have an emotional connection (i.e., you feel the same way about something that she does), or maybe she just wants to know what the hell you're so doggone sore about. If you say you're haunted about something from childhood or frightened about a problem you can't solve, she'll lose interest -- or worse. 

So there we have it -- wives want husbands to be tough, and husbands want their wives to think of them as tough, and so we shut our mouths about any emotions except maybe anger or regret. This is foundational stuff, a deep part of the human condition, and seventy-odd years of pop psychology hasn't changed the problem. 

It does highlight the importance of men having male friends, and I mean real friends, not just golf pals or Dorito-sucking bodies in front of the football game or stooges to get stoopid with on Saturday night. If you're a man, your close male friends ought to be the ones you can go to without fearing loss of face. But of course, we have historically let one another down in that way, too. Looking like a coward to other men is almost as bad as looking like a coward to the women who rely on us. So we just eat it, until maybe we eat a bullet. 

Women don't have a monopoly on all the trouble in the world. Sometimes it seems that the best we men can hope for is to be able to take whatever comes like a man. 

The memeing of life.

It's Monday! Of course I'm relying on memes to see me through the blog this morning. They're part of a complete breakfast! 

Not one of mine, but sadly, true

Thanks for the pic, Stiiv!

Lost art, but not dead yet.

Many years ago my wife gave me a sweatshirt that I still have. It is very beaten-up these days, but I won't part with it yet. I think it has an important message about the human condition, especially the agnate half of the human condition.  

Why don't men want to ask for directions? 

I realize that's an exceptionally broad sweep, but within every truism is some truth. My dad did not like to ask directions and neither do I, nor do most guys I know. It's not like we sat down at the lodge meeting and voted on it -- "All right, boys, remember, from this point in, no asking directions." I think it's just instinctive to the male side of the species. When you're a stranger and you're lost, you are in a position of weakness, and asking directions is akin to admitting weakness to someone you don't know in a place with which you're unfamiliar. When we look at it that way, it's no surprise that the situation sets off alarm bells deep in our psyche. 

In fact, it's not surprising at all that men don't want to ask for directions. It's much more surprising that women do—even when they don't have a guy with them that they can force to ask for directions. I think prudence enters the conversation then, saying that getting more lost is even worse than admitting being lost. This is another sweeping generalization, but I think by and large women are stronger in the virtue of prudence than men are. 

The reason I bring this all up is that a friend of mine is taking his son to West Point today. Despite all the wokeness that has descended on BSA (please, don't call it Boy Scouts anymore), and the fact that they're allowing icky girls in because all Girl Scouts do is sell cookies, some boys are still working on their achievements. Today these scouts are going to work with actual soldiers on their orienteering merit badge. 

When my pal mentioned this, I thought he meant cartography, but no. In fact, much to my surprise, the BSA has never had a merit badge for cartography or mapmaking, according to Steve Henning's research-filled page on the topic. There I was, thinking that Orienteering is just another wussy, watered-down skill that replaced the more demanding cartography, as General Science replaced Zoology, but no. What it did replace was Pathfinding, which had been discontinued anyway in 1952; Orienteering came on the scene in 1973 and has remained a badge ever since. Furthermore, the Orienteering badge has a 10-page workbook with all the stuff you have to do; it made me tired just looking at it. No wonder I never got past the blue uniform.

So I've decided Orienteering really is useful. In the age of GPS we usually don't need it; nor do we need to ask directions as much as we used to. However, if it helps these boys grow into men who don't have to ever ask for directions, then I'm all for it. They're fulfilling the First Rule of Manhood, and making us old guys proud.

Today's craziest thing ever.

Today's lunacy comes from the World of Science, another institution hopelessly corrupted by greed, ambition, and political correctness. I encountered these examples on a research project about headaches.

Let us start with the Global Healthy Living Foundation (bold in quoted material added):

Recently, it has been suggested that the word race should not be listed among risk factors for disease. Instead, it is suggested to state the effects of racism as the reason why a disease is more common, more severe, or less well treated in people from underserved populations.

All right, so there we have it. There is no reason that one group should suffer from any disease more than another; the only difference is the effects of racism. Note that we don't know who has suggested that; it's just out there, like the breeze, like radio waves. 

Taken at face value, what does this mean? Well, for one example, how about all those studies that noticed the preponderance of breast cancer in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, studies that pointed the way to the discovery of a mutation on the BRCA genes 1 and 2 that made many of these women more likely to suffer from this form of cancer. Did that teach us anything? No, the only reason that these women were more likely to have cancer was because of the effects of racism. 

See how easy it is to say something that sounds good and throw away a century of genuine scientific research?

The unequitable scientist,
plotting how to exclude others

But Jewish people are of the white race, not the Jewish race, I hear a voice in the balcony say. Well, that depends who's making the assessment, doesn't it? College administrators say Jews are white, I guess, and Hitler said they weren't, and in both cases it was anti-Semitic. 

Let's look at a study in Neurology, the esteemed journal of the American Academy of Neurology. What do we learn here?

Whereas races are not inherent biological categories, race is a social construct that as a vehicle for systemic racism has profound health effects. Throughout the literature, it is apparent that race plays a role in the appropriate diagnosis and treatment of headache disorders. Although recent population studies have found the prevalence of severe headache and migraine is roughly equal among White (15.5%), African American (15.0%), and Hispanic (14.9%) groups in the United States,6 differences exist in diagnosis, treatments, and outcomes.

So now we learn that there really is no such thing as race at all; it's just a social construct invented to keep people down. And yet then we have data for people of difference races, to prove that some are treated differently than others. It's easy to get the feeling that the word race is magic, that it can be dismissed when convenient and raised again when useful. When bad people see race, it's not real; when good people see race, it's crucial. Even in the same paragraph. They want to have their pain and eat from it, too.

Now let's see what the National Migraine and Headache Awareness Month people have to tell us about this topic. (That month is celebrated in June, by the way; mark your calendars.)

About one in six African Americans in the United States are diagnosed with migraine disease and one in five is diagnosed with tension-type headache. Studies on race-related gaps and possible health care inequalities in people with headache disorders are virtually non-existent. Understanding potential race-related disparities in headache patients may inform the development of culturally contextualized healthcare policies and interventions that are more likely to reduce or eradicate race-related headaches altogether (Bernadette Davantes Heckman and Ashley Joi Britton 2015).

Prior research suggests that if a patient is black, his pain is likely to be underestimated and under-treated compared to a white patient.

So now it looks like race is back on the menu, because people have race-related headaches and are treated differently by hospitals and doctors because of their race. In fact, an outfit called CtrlM Health would like us to know that

A growing body of research shows that migraine in Black people is more frequent, severe, and likely to be chronic and associated with more depression compared to white People.

Yet, among Black people with headache and migraine, inaccurate diagnoses are more common. 

BUT WAIT! Race is just a social construct, so how can you possibly say that black people have migraines more often than white people? You can only say that racism causes a difference in their care. 

Look, I personally think WAY too much is made about race. It's part of our individual human makeup and experiences, but as a Catholic, I think we're all made in God's image and we're all made by Him with love, and we should be happy about it, not fight about it. 

Medically, though, racial background and social background can provide a lot of clues about the origins of disease. Arguing about whether race is a real thing or not is almost beside the point; we would like to know if disease is caused by genes, caused by behavior, or caused by genes and triggered by environment, or the like. Thus, there are statistical uses in studying groups by similarities in DNA. And if you don't want to call it race, call it something less explosive. We're just stirring up trouble where it isn't necessary.

As for racism, sure, that's a problem in the human condition and always will be. The more tribal we act, the worse it is, and political correctness is nothing if not tribal, dividing us by income, race, sex, sexual preference, religion, experience, nation, history, you name it. 

However, there is one notable reason that I can guarantee has a lot to do with why white people get better healthcare in America despite the ferocious drive for "equity," a reason that cannot be conquered by all the goodwill in the world. Allow me to quote the uber-leftist Kaiser Family Foundation:

As of 2020, Medicaid covers about three in ten Black, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN), and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (NHOPI) nonelderly adults and more than two in ten of Hispanic nonelderly adults, compared to 17% of their White counterparts. 

Government healthcare sucks. And that's true whether you're red, white, blue, black, polka-dotted, or striped. The more of it you have to rely on, the worse your overall experience with healthcare is going to be. By the numbers, most Medicaid patients are white, but not by the percentage of the groups, and that's what matters to the equity hustlers.

On a related topic, about twenty years ago or so people were going bananas because researchers noted that men were usually the subject of cardiac health studies, and this made women's experience (especially symptoms of coronary distress) invisible, leading to misdiagnosis and death. They pointed out that heart disease is the #1 killer of American women, same as American men, but claimed that women who relied on the usual advice about heart attack symptoms were dying more often. So in 2004 the American Heart Association launched the Go Red for Women movement. 

Pardon my cynicism, but I also think the AHA and others were tired of the breast cancer people getting all the attention -- that is to say, money. "Hey! We're still #1! Show us some love! And money!" 

The point is, people still want to argue that women face health disparities, but when you put them on the spot they won't even tell you what a woman is. Not even Supreme Court nominees. They know the mob is waiting to pounce, and they're -- what's the word? -- chickenshit. And liars. Don't forget liars. 

Anyway, I literally have a headache now after writing all this. So, my research is complete.

Sorry!

I was having trouble with Google Docs, because most people have trouble with Google Docs unless they spend a lot of time using Google Docs, but I have avoided that because I hate Google Docs. Nevertheless, it is sometimes the price I pay for working from home. Thing is, I thought I had screwed something up for a client because of my inexperience, and I apologized. The client asked me why I was apologizing, since I had done nothing wrong. 

I explained that I had just passed a big wedding anniversary, an if I had a secret to being a good husband it would be: Apologize first and ask questions later. 

"Just assume I'm sorry and then tell me what I did!"

There have been times when I've taken a different approach. Early on in our marriage, I usually thought: Well, if it was something important, I'm sure she'll tell me. This only prolongs the agony, at least for me, because she could fume a lot longer than I could ignore. She's of Irish descent, you know, and they can hold a grudge five hundred years after they're dead. 

Later, when I got more used to the things that really triggered this fury, I might think: I know what I did wrong but I feel embarrassed enough without rehashing it, so if I act contrite maybe it will go away. Oh, no, brother -- another rookie mistake. They never forget. They may forgive, but they never forget. (I'm not sure if I'm talking about the Irish or wives here, but it probably applies to both.)

My next tactic, going on the offensive ("What did I do wrong NOW?"), gets it out in the open, but not in a constructive way. It takes much longer for the whole situation to find resolution when you go from 0 to shouting in five seconds.

In the end, I have found that when I encounter The Scowl or the Wall of Cold, it's best to brace myself for whatever and ask what the problem is. Most of the time it's actually not me, but if I don't crack the ice I'll have to wait for the explosion. 

On the other side of the coin, when my wife does something that makes me sore, I usually just suck it up and refuse to talk about it. Never complain, never explain, right? Unless it's a real doozy, in which case I may go do something constructive, like clean up the cellar, in the LOUDEST WAY POSSIBLE.

Maybe my real secret to marriage is that both parties have to be able to put up with each other's BS. It takes two to tango, as they used to say, and everyone is full of BS sometimes. But if one side won't tango, there's not much that can be done. 

Panic sandwich.

My wife and I react very differently to upsetting stimuli. If there's something worrisome happening, she loses sleep while I can barely stay awake. If an important decision must be made, her bowels turn to jelly while I seize up like sand mix. And if there's something really bad hitting, she can't eat, while all I can do is eat. 

Why are we like this? I have no idea. Her family is Irish straight up the potato tree, and she says that maybe when disaster struck, like an English invasion, they went into starvation mode because the English were going to burn the crops and take everything else. Me, I know I get my habits from my mom's side of the family, a real genetic mixed bag, including a lot of Jews. When the pogroms were looming, my ancestors probably ate everything in sight so they wouldn't have to carry it as they fled. 

This was on display yesterday as we received some worrisome news (more about that as it develops). My wife could barely choke down a cup o' Campbell's soup at lunch, whereas I wiped out a sandwich and sucked down tortilla chips like a tortilla-powered Humvee. 

According to the Yale School of Medicine, 

...while everyone feels stress at times, reactions to stress can be different for women and men.

     In general, women are more likely to think and talk about what is causing stress. Women also are more likely to reach out to others for support and seek to understand the sources of their stress.

     Men typically respond to stress using distraction. And men often engage in physical activities that can offer an escape from thinking about a stressful situation.

Does eating chips count as a physical activity?

I'm not actually sure the description is accurate for me and the men I know. I agree that women are more likely to talk about stress, I'm not sure they always want answers so much as to blow off steam. We're all like that. And just because a guy isn't talking about stress doesn't mean he's not thinking about it. He may be brooding from everything about maintaining ethics in a cold cosmos to the unfairness of life to the best way to punch someone in the nose and get away with it. You know, deep thoughts. 

And failing that, he might just tie one on. (So might the woman, but she's more likely to call it Girl Time.)

But I hadn't meant to make this a men-and-women-sure-are wacky blog entry; no matter whether you're male, female, or one of Baskin-Robbins' 31 genders, you undoubtedly have some unique combination of methods to deal with the inevitable stressors of life. 

Now, pardon me, as it's breakfast time, and I'm going to get a bowl of cereal big enough for Scrooge McDuck to swim around in. 

A couple of stops for cheap gags....

 

No men.

I heard about a young lady, a daughter of a friend of a friend, who graduated high school this year with a plan to practice living away at college. She and her pals got jobs in a beachfront town and rented a house; they would work and pay their own way and be responsible like grown-ups should be. 

But they made one fatal and entirely, completely, 100% avoidable mistake. They allowed some guys to rent with them. 

I'm kidding about the picture--this is from a show about hoarding--but not about the boys. One of the things that made this young lady quit her job and come home in July was that the boys were absolute pigs and refused to do a thing around the house. They just left their crap everywhere and never scrubbed a dish. If I know my gender, they probably left a lot of beer cans everywhere as well. And this was all foreseeable for anyone who has ever been 18 years old. 

I don't mean to blame the victim. Of course these slobs should have pulled their weight in the beach house. But it is to be expected that boys won't, certainly not in their first away-from-home digs. I have to guess that these boys and girls were not romantically entangled, or the girls could have used their wiles to get the boys to behave like they should. Not that the women should have to, of course; I'm just saying it would have worked. 

Unsupervised men are pigs. Not all, no. Just by and large. Especially when they first get out from under Mom's thumb. Hell, if these boys were actually paying their share of rent on time I'd be surprised. 

I remember visiting a friend at college in my own university days; he lived in a house with other undergrads, each worse than the next, subsisting on cheap beer and frozen potpies. While I was there two housemates got in a play-fight in the kitchen and body-slammed the table, which did it no good at all. These things don't generally happen in women's houses. 

Another friend I visited lived in a similar arrangement; a few doors down his girlfriend lived in a house with some women. It was like staying with Oscar and visiting Felix.

My point is, people will say that in these enlightened times we need not worry about mixing young men and women in co-ed housing, but I say: Be wise, women. For your own sanity, if nothing else, don't share a roof with these uncivilized heathens until they get some civilizing. The summer you save may be your own.

Why are girls so crazy?

A longstanding topic for boys -- why are girls so crazy? -- is one that often persists well beyond the age of youth. And it probably goes back to the time of the first humans. Ogg couldn't figure for the life of him why Lilg said she loved him but treated him like dirt so often. Why she nutty as cuckoo? Ogg wondered. 

That's just typical battle of the sexes, boys being dopey stuff. Well, it used to be. Now I think girls have even more reasons to be crazy. Many such reasons exist in the modern era, such as social media, cyberbullying, and teen magazines. But we also have to count books, specifically books targeted at female readers. Here are three books that, while fake, provide representations of the kind of books I mean. 

Sweet but clumsy Hillary Hippo has a number of
silly misadventures when she goes shopping.

Besties Aisha and Tammy, who love detective stories, get on the case
when a dognapping ring steals Aisha's standard poodle, Miss Curlz. 

Book 5 of the Bluud and Thuunder series finds vamp tramp Katey Damian at odds with her lover Stormi Winds when the Sistahhood suffers a new attack by Rothschilde and his enforcer, Clerisy Bitchop. Can the Sistahs kill their way through their enemies and find a place to be free at last?

I know children change quickly -- but seriously, who could handle going from one to the other in six years? At least half of the teen girls' books I've seen lately aren't even girl-meets-boy books; they're girl-meets-girl books, and the males are at best useless and more likely evil. In the last decade it's gotten even worse than I could imagine, and I'm a catastrophizer. 

This is an important thing to note: Books marketed to women are not like the books made for teen girls. Certainly there are some, the kind that get made into movies with dark shadows and washed-out colors, but far more are typical love stories, more Hallmark than hellion, including mysteries called cozies and even a thriving subgenre of Amish romance books. 

So the next time a teenage girl is driving you crazy, bear in mind that it's not just hormones, it's not just peer pressure, and it's not just social issues -- it's also a mindset in the publishing world designed to make them angry and eager to reject everything.

Moms!!!!!!!

Happy Mother's Day to all those moms out there! 

My mom was a pretty tough lady, God rest her soul, and indeed she had to be. There were many times we kids were threatened with death, severe violence, or abandonment at a Dickensian orphanage. In my opinion, a child that doesn't get that kind of thing from his mom (the threats, not the follow-through) is not trying hard enough. Or his mom is a perfect saint. 

I won't go into the usual blah blah blah about the history of Mother's Day and how the creator regretted her creation -- you can read that anywhere today. For that matter, many mothers regret their creations from time to time. Instead, I wanted to point out the other holidays or special commemorations that occur around Mother's Day. 

Now, it's no coincidence I'm sure that Lilac Sunday occurs on the second Sunday of May every year, just like Mother's Day. Or that Iris Day is celebrated on May 8, which is always close to Mother's Day if not smack on it. Well, maybe it is a coincidence, but with all the flowers bought for moms on this day, I doubt it. I may not smell a rat, but I can smell a flower.

National Hospital Week and National Women's Health Week both start today, which is an obvious tie-in to Mother's Day. For most of us, Mom is our #1 healthcare provider in our early years, and so we worry about her own health. There seems to be a connection. For that matter, May 8 is World Red Cross Day. And who gave you more bandages that Mom? 

Also, May 8 is National Outdoor Intercourse Day, and that's one way to become a mom. I wonder if anyone goes around claiming that he loves camping because Mom and Dad conceived him in Yosemite? Wouldn't surprise me. 

May 8 is also supposed to be National No Socks Day, a day when we parade around sans socks. This would seem to be another rite-of-spring type event, but wait! May 9 is Lost Sock Memorial Day! Now we start to see the connection. Moms do most of the laundry even in these enlightened times; No Socks Day may just be a means to cover the fact that so many socks, tragically, have been lost. And so it's no surprise that May 10 is Clean Up Your Room Day, when kids are supposed to get all the crap cleaned out and straightened up, and undoubtedly many lost socks will be found. Do it for Mom, children!

Whether on purpose or by happenstance, there are many reasons this week to think about our mothers and all the misery through which we put them. Get your mom something nice, if you can. And if, like mine, your mom has gone to her rest -- well, with rotten kids like us, she probably earned it, and God bless her. 

Women drivers!

It is a great advance of respect for women that the idea of the woman driver being a menace on wheels has disappeared into the comedy past. Whereas "women drivers" was a popular punchline up to and through the seventies -- one that seemed so permanent that it was the focus of a Jetsons episode -- the idea that women are naturally lousy drivers has been banished at last. 

Of course some women are lousy drivers. As are some men are. Some women are really good drivers.  

Purty, too!

I suspect it was the insurance companies that cured us of this comic misconception. Statistics are what they are, and when money is on the line, they are usually trustworthy. When it became well known that young men had to pay more for car insurance than young women because the boys were a higher risk, that seemed to stop the jokes. As the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Highway Loss Data Institute puts it, "Many more men than women die each year in motor vehicle crashes. Men typically drive more miles than women and are more likely to engage in risky driving practices, including not using safety belts, driving while impaired by alcohol, and speeding. Crashes involving male drivers often are more severe than those involving female drivers."

But even this is only part of the story. As it turns out, for example, it's only young men who suck more at driving, just the kind of "hold my beer" guys we'd expect to exhibit the least safe behavior. More from the IIHS: "The number of driver fatal crash involvements per 100 million miles driven in 2016-17 was 63 percent higher for males (2.1 per 100 million miles traveled) than for females (1.3 per 100 million miles traveled). Rates were substantially higher for males than for females ages 16-29, but were only slightly higher for ages 30 and older. The sex difference was largest among drivers ages 20-29." Furthermore, "For nearly every year from 1975 to 2019, the number of male crash deaths was more than twice the number of female crash deaths, but the gap has narrowed. From 1975 to 2019, male crash deaths declined by 22 percent and female crash deaths declined by 12 percent."

Possibly the female empowerment folk would say that women are naturally better drivers, and that's because they value life more than those brutal and thuggish men. Conversely, male supporters (har har) could counter that women have a timidity that makes them safer but makes discoveries and advances less likely. Then the women blame the men for that and everyone starts screaming again. 

The main reason I mention this is that my anecdotal evidence says the bad women drivers are getting to be as bad as the bad men and for the same reason -- a feeling of invincibility coupled with ignorance. A couple of doors down from me is a stop sign on a T intersection. Drivers come up the stem of the T and have to stop; they can only go right or left, but cars could be coming from either of those directions. Most commonly they turn right, and because of the rise of the road, the visibility is worse toward their left side. Therefore, a full stop and some caution is required. 

Now: Who blows through the stop sign like it isn't there most, men or women?

My experience is, it's about equal. Same with those speeding down the street. 

One problem with anecdotal evidence is that comparing populations on the street is not the same as looking at a population at large -- who are these people, what are the sex ratios between people going this way or that, etc. But -- anecdotally -- my observations should favor the women, as most of the men I see driving during the day are local contractors, while most of the women are moms shuttling kids. Why are these moms driving as poorly as the plumbers and lawn guys?

Maybe it's because I live in New York, where drivers are fairly lousy on the whole. It is worth noting, though, that in 2011 a study reported that women are more dangerous drivers than men: 

Women drivers are more likely to be involved in an accident, according to scientists.

Researchers looked at 6.5 million car crashes and found a higher than expected number of accidents between two female drivers.

     They also discovered that women have a tough time negotiating crossroads, T-junctions and slip roads.

     The results are even more surprising given that men spend more time behind the wheel than women. On average, men drive 60 per cent of the time, and women 40 per cent.

     Michael Sivak, of the University of Michigan, said: "The results indicate that in certain crash scenarios, male-to-male crashes tend to be under-represented and female-to-female crashes tend to be over-represented."

Was that well reported in 2011? Not that I recall. 

I just throw it all out there as a question that we all ought to think about. Just obey the stop signs and try to stay somewhere in the orbit of the speed limit, is what I'm saying. At least on my block. I won't say it's because "We Love Our Kids!" the way some neighborhood signs will tell you. Nah, a lot of people here might be indifferent to the kids. We just hate mopping up blood. 

Where is the returns department?

WOMAN DEMANDS TO SEE MANAGER

WARWICK, NY -- Noted consumer and activist Kaitlynn Schweack demands to see the manager regarding the new year that has just begun two days ago. 

"I have a number of complaints with this so-called 2022 that need to be addressed by a higher up, and I mean right this minute," said Schweack, known in area stores for expecting "prompt and adequate service".

"First of all, this supposed new year is extremely shopworn, to say the least," she continued. "I mean, look at this mess. It's still got these Brazilian floods and other clear evidence of climate chaos, totally unresolved from the previous model. There's still knuckle-dragging morons with guns all over the country. You can see signs of financial crisis right here all along the edge. And look! There's still COVID all over it! You call this new?"

Schweack further stated that this was probably a reconditioned or refurbished year, falsely being sold as new, and the store should be ashamed of itself. 

"Like all of us, when I go to get a new year, I want something clean and unsullied," she told reporters. "Not this thing! Sully sully sully! I demand satisfaction. I and my 20,000 followers on TikTok, I might add,"

The store's "no refunds, no returns" policy, clearly marked on signs and packages, was also considered objectionable by the noted consumer. 

"That's against federal and state law, you know," said Schweack. "I don't care who you are. Your signs cut no ice with me. Now, am I going to get a really NEW new year, or do we have to escalate this further?"

At press time there was no indication that anything would or possibly even could be done to satisfy the demands of Schweack and her supporters. 

Women.

Today is International Women's Day, and good for them. 

Some guys think a holiday like this is silly -- women outnumber us in America by 50.8 to 49.2, and since when do we celebrate a special day for the majority? There's no White Folks Day or Hetero Pride Day or Lottery Losers Day or People Who Hated Algebra Day. Special days are reserved to give minority groups attention.

Well, I don't care. Honestly, I don't personally know any women who are going out there to make a big deal of it. In New York we can barely go to a restaurant, never mind a parade. I think women, including my wife, will be happy to take pride in the advances that they have made in society in the last 150 years and see what Google is doodling for it, and that's about it. I'm just glad I don't have to buy anything. 

Tobacco Celebrates Women, 1984

This still sounds like I'm being a typical patronizing caveman, doesn't it? I guess so. No offense is meant, though. I just don't get excited over dates that have no religious or national significance. Women's Day's date of March 8 doesn't commemorate the day women went over the hill to defeat the forces of the International Men's Army or something; they just picked March 8 for no reason I can find. Russian women seem to have been the ones who settled on the date, which is even stranger to me, since March 8 is still very cold in most of Russia. I guess they had their reasons. If I were looking for a date that would be good to get a parade and show of force up, I'd go with June 5. 

Again, I'm not picking on women. I barely commemorate my own birthday. My ancestry is a mixed bag, so I don't get worked up over ethnic holidays. Even St. Patrick's Day has lost its pride of place for my Irish side since I stopped drinking. 

 

I think women are pretty awesome, and I know that women are as smart as men, and particular women are smarter than every guy I know. I'm glad women can stand on their own without men, own whatever they want, do whatever they like, and so on, and I'm sad and angered for societies where they can't. And I dislike men who put on a dress and pretend to be female so they can gain unfair advantages in sports or make their stupid résumés look better to get government jobs. That's as bad as a white guy painting his face and applying for minority grants.

So that's all I got. If you are a woman and you're celebrating the day, enjoy it! You won't hear a bad word out of me about females. If you want to hear someone say anything bad about them, ask my wife. She thinks teenage girls are evil and women are worse backbiters, backstabbers, and passive-aggressive manipulators than men; that men are liars but aren't nearly as good at lying as women. But you didn't hear that from me. 

Bluster.

March seemed to come in like a lamb yesterday, with moderate winter temperatures and sunshine, but in the evening it stripped off its fake wool and started roaring like a lion. Temperatures dropped to 18 overnight, with winds up to 22 mph. Like I haven't lost enough shingles this winter. You know it's windy and cold when you think you should put up the hood on your coat and find that you've already put up the hood on your coat.

According to the Time and Date site, February is the windiest month of the year in New York. Don't you believe it. The 8 mph shown may be the highest average, but I believe March has our strongest gusts. Heck, when I was a kid in school, March was usually represented on classroom calendars with a wind-blowing cloud. 

Like this jerk.

It was as inevitable as the raindrops falling on an umbrella for April. 

According to The Dictionary of Proverbs, the association of March and Wind in rhyme goes back to at least 1630. The phrase "March winds and April showers / Bring forth May flowers" was first collected in Frederick Thomas Elworthy's The West Somerset Word-Book in 1886. 

And what about Walter G. Samuels, Leonard Whitcup, and Teddy Powell, who wrote the song "March Winds and April Showers," which was a big hit for Ruth Etting? 

March winds and April showers

Make way for sweet May flowers

And then comes June, a moon, and you

March winds and April showers

Romance will soon be ours

An outdoor paradise for two

Do we want to argue with those guys? Or with Ruth? I didn't think so! 

Time and Date also says that June is our rainiest month, not April. Obviously they didn't grow up with the same classrooms I did.

Another bit of evidence that March is the month in which the wind blows hardest is that it's also Women's History Month. Har har hyuk hyuk... uh oh. 

I hope my wife doesn't read this. Or the late Ruth Etting. I wouldn't want them to think I was some Epipaleolithic cisgender white man, saying that women yell at men. They'd yell at me. 

I'd better just blow on outta here.