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. 

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. 

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. 

Old mailroom Joe.

Guys in the mailroom are my pals. At one time I worked for a not-for-profit organization that had a dull official holiday party, but down in the cellar, the guys in the mailroom had a Christmas party that absolutely kicked. Later in my fabulous career I had a desk job in a tiny office, and every morning Mike (I'll call him) made his mail rounds, and he would stop in to talk sports. I liked him and all, but sometimes I had to literally tell him to leave so I could get some work done and not get in Dutch with the boss. Mike later got canned for, well, using the executive can, although he denied it.  

But before either of those jobs I was a mailroom man myself, starting as a part-timer. They hired two of us to deliver the mail throughout an organization that had several buildings, so that meant shoving the mail cart through burning sun and pouring rain, through ice and snow. 

It looked like this one. Note that the
wheels are not made for ice and snow.

I, young whippersnapper, did the mornings, and old Joe got the afternoons. Our shifts were expected to overlap. But we spent the first couple of days together, learning the route and meeting everyone, and that's how I got to know old Joe.

Like Mike, old Joe liked to talk, but not about sports. He talked about his former career; he talked about his son (who seemed to be on the outs with him somehow, if I recall correctly). He talked about the kind of work he had done, but the details did not impress on my mind. What did was one thing he said on that second day of training, while we were sitting around waiting for the boss. It went something like this: 

"I think as we work together, you'll find that I have a lot of life experience. And you will begin to see that you can learn a lot from an older guy like me. In time you may come to think of me as a father figure."

And I nodded and thought What is the matter with this man?

It was like he had already scripted our relationship past the pilot episode, deep into the first season. I had just met him the day before!

Maybe he had. Maybe he spent too much time alone, thinking of how things ought to go. I'm pretty sure he was not married anymore, but I don't know if he was a widower. He may have watched too much TV. I don't recall a single bit of wisdom from him. I don't remember him ever asking me or anyone else about ourselves. 

Not that I had a long time to see him in action -- they fired him after the first week and put me on full-time. I never knew why, but were I to guess, I'd say he spent way too much time bugging people who were trying to work and way too little time doing his job. 

That was many years ago, and I'm sure old mailroom Joe has gone to his reward. I think about him sometimes. I think he was very lonely, but in his loneliness, he developed odd habits of selfishness that pushed others away, cementing him deeper in his solitude. There's lesson he taught me -- albeit as a cautionary tale. 

I hope he and his son restored their relationship. I hope he found someone who liked him and could spend time with him. I hope he didn't need the chump change from that mail job, because it did not pay well. And -- why not? -- I hope he found someone who did respect him like a father, even if it had to be his own kid.  

Forgotten men.

After thinking of the vanished Little Pete a couple of weeks ago, I got to thinking about a few old men I knew early in my so-called career who have always kind of stuck in my mind. I thought I'd share a few with you, starting with a man I'll call Gabe.

When I was in college I worked a couple of days a week as a general flunky for a small office in midtown. I was never quite sure what they did, but it appears in retrospect that they held and managed real estate in different spots in the nation. One of my jobs was distributing the mail, and we would get newspapers from all over. On my breaks I would read the papers, see which funnies were running in places like Ocala or Kansas City. Everyone there was really nice to me, which was impressive, because I had some classic screwups in that job. Like throwing out cartons of flyers that were due to be mailed, and breaking a toilet while trying to put on a new toilet seat. (A little hole in the rim can become an attractive fountain when you flush!)

Gabe was the founder, I think, and had the only private office, one of those walled-off corner ones of the kind common then, where the walls didn't reach the ceiling. He seemed to me to be about a hundred years old. He would come in late, get greeted by everyone, take off his hat, go into his office, and -- do nothing, I think. His son was running the place. Gabe was, as I would come to find out, out of it. He didn't bug anyone, but he couldn't do anything. The man was senile, I guess, but he didn't cause trouble and he wasn't mean. 

Gabe (Dickens version)

One day he cornered me while I was sitting in my area -- the back room, where real estate flyers and the like sat in boxes on large metal shelves, or piled on skids, waiting for mailing. I may have been stuffing envelopes, something I did a lot of in that job and others in years to come. Gabe came over and sat next to me to tell me about his idea for a new business, one that was going to fill a niche, and bring some serious money into the firm.

His idea was to publish a new kind of business directory -- as he spoke we were sitting in front of a library of the (then lucrative) Thomson business directories -- and gave an example of how it would work. Say, if one were to be in the bicycle parts trade, you’d have a directory for manufacturers, suppliers, and customers. And from that point on I have no idea what he was talking about, because as far as I could tell he had just described exactly the books on the shelves next to us. He promised to keep me apprised of the situation, as good opportunities would come forth. I thanked him. It was the only conversation we ever had. 

It wasn't much longer before Gabe left this world, and immediately after sitting shiva his son moved into that corner walled office. It still seemed pretty cold to me, going in that fast, but I imagine Gabe’s son had put up with a lot in Dad's later years and just wanted to move on with things. 

All of it to say, we men can have an awful time letting go of work, even when we don't need to do it, even when the work doesn't need us anymore, even when we have nothing left to offer.

I've never forgotten Gabe, though, and he did teach me a lesson. And he gave me another thing about old age to be scared of. 

We'll revisit this topic another time soon. Meanwhile, Gabe, rest in peace. 

Please be seated.

I had a terrific blog entry planned out for yesterday morning, but then I fell down the stairs. 

Son of a bitch, man -- I don't think I'm technically old yet, but the older get you get, the less falling down the stairs is a joke.  

The scenario: Carrying down two lightweight but bulky containers of recycling to the garage, which accesses through the cellar, to participate in the weekly Recycling Kabuki before it all goes in the landfill. Being a manly masculine type with XY chromosomes, I cannot make two trips when it's the slightest bit possible to make one. Yes, I have socks on, the lightweight kind with little grip (there are shoes in the cellar). But no, I have never in two decades plus fallen down these stairs. 

First time for everything, they say.

Would have been nice to
fall down more scenic stairs.

It was pretty spectacular. Empty cans went flying, and I myself thudded two or three times, once with the back of my head, once on my tailbone. Scared the hell out of the dog. Didn't do me a bit of good either.

Those of you who have been hanging around here (God love you) may recall that at the beginning of 2020 I was in the hospital for a couple of days with spinal issues, and before that I cracked my head on the driveway through the miracle of black ice and was dizzy for weeks. So hitting my butt and my head was sort of a twofer. Which would hospitalize me? 

Fortunately, neither. First, I sat on the steps trying to run diagnostics; then I opened my eyes and looked around and had no sign of dizziness. I was in a good deal of pain in what Dave Barry calls the behindular area, but it was not spinal and excruciating. No breaks. 

Australian video commenter Ozzy Man, in his long-running Destination F series, enjoys pointing out when people have landed hard on the coccyx, because coccyx is both difficult and funny to say. Well, I had landed in Destination F, because I bruised that coccyx quite well, and it hurt like the dickens. 

So, looks like it's OTC pain meds and icing for up to four weeks, according to Mount Sinai. Fortunately I've been able to sleep and to work, both of which can be difficult after an injury however stupid. And I have joined a long line of comic characters injuring the tusheroo -- enough that TV Tropes has a whole page dedicated to the art of injuring the butt. 

What have I learned? Maybe to start paying attention to what I'm doing while I'm actually doing it for once in my life. And, despite the risk to my man card, maybe I should consider making two trips. Not saying I will, but I should consider it. 

All you gorillas.

The Daily Star, Britain's best newspaper for naughty news and using words like "boffin," reports that there may be a clue to the origin of baldy sours like myself, and thus a solution: 

Baldness could soon be cured after boffins discover the 'caveman gene'

Scientists claim that humans are only largely hairless because through evolution we have disabled the 'caveman gene' which would otherwise leave us with a full coat of hair

Sounds promising! 

Boffins reckon they can cure baldness following the discovery of a “caveman gene” which caused our ancestors to grow hair.

They found humans are largely hairless because although we have the genes for a full coat of hair, evolution has disabled them.

Scientists say the breakthrough could lead to ways to regrow hair in bald people, those undergoing chemotherapy or alopecia sufferers.

So now the situation becomes clear. We who suffer from male pattern baldness are not "freaks" or "losers" or "skinheads" or "cue balls" or "glabrous" or "chrome domes" or "chihuahuas" or "tile tops" or "balloon heads" or "necks blowing bubble gum." We're just farther along from the stinking hairy subhuman ancestors than you hairballs are. 

  

A typical meeting of hairy guys

I understand that the hair attracts the ladies more than the lack of hair does. Some chicks have always dug the cavemen. As Joanie Sommers sang in 1962's immortal "Johnny Get Angry," 

Oh, Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad
Give me the biggest lecture I ever had
I want a brave man, I want a cave man
Johnny, show me that you care, really care for me

At least she wasn't asking him to sock her in the nose. 

As we of the lesser-hirsute variety must endure the mockery, out loud or silent, of our fuzzy friends, it's not surprising that we hope for a genuine cure for our polished position. The Star story says that it could be just around the corner, thanks to some other boffins, and links to a piece about Concert Pharmaceuticals' deuruxolitinib, a "selective inhibitor of Janus kinases JAK1 and JAK2." The company announced successful phase 3 trials last November. Apparently it really helped a lot of people, young and old, regrow hair. (No word on whether it made them grow hair on their backs or anything.)

I think it would be lovely to have a pill that would help regrow scalp hair, especially for women who suffer from baldness. For men it can be a trial, but for women it's a disaster. 

I'd like it just because it would help me pass for one of you paleolithic types, which could be useful. But it's not a big deal either way. I have a lot of hats, and I know how to use them. 

Two weeks!

I don't want to put the fear of God into any of you guys out there, but Christmas is exactly two weeks away, and if you have that someone special on your list, remember:

🎅🎄FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. 🤶⛄

It's a truism that many men suck at buying gifts for their loved ones, and it's a truism because it's very often true. My dad was completely incapable of buying someone a gift. If he thought you wanted a shed, he could come over and knock one up in a day and expect no thanks for it, but when it came to going into an actual store and trying to figure out what Mom might like, forget it. I think he would have felt more comfortable being dropped blindfolded in Shanghai and told to find his way home.

For minor events, like Mom's birthday, he might unofficially deputize the kids to take this money and go buy Mom something nice. For Christmas, Mom just bought what she wanted. She knew what she was getting when she married him. And for her part, she was an excellent shopper and gift-giver. 

Mom (l.) out in front of the pack on Black Friday

Some guys figure that if they only had some real dough they wouldn't have this problem. After all, if you walk into a jewelry store and drop enough cheddar to buy a furnace, you're probably going to come out with something your beloved will like. There is some truth to that truism, too. Even this plan, however, has its pitfalls:

🎁 She may be the type who is not into jewelry. Maybe she's concerned about the exploitation of miners, or doesn't like cold metal on her skin, or just would rather wear natural accessories like feathers or twigs. You know: Hippies.

🎁 You might have tremendously bad taste that taxes the powers of the clerk. Even if you got your wife to like football, for example, a $10,000 diamond-crusted dental grill with CLEVELAND BROWNS written on it is probably not going to get the job done.

🎁 Wake up! You don't have 10 large lying around! She might hit you for blowing the money needed for the college fund or to put toward a new car! Whaddaya, stupid?

Goodness knows there are enough gift guides out there on the Internet. Maybe one of them can lead you to the present promised land. Better act fast (especially if you want free shipping, which we know you do). 

It's always going to be dicey, though, even if you know the person really well. And if you're in love, shouldn't you? You ought to be able to answer these questions:

⭐ Is this person the type to be really impressed by how much you spent? Because if so, she will know how much it cost. Trust me on this. 

⭐ Is the person the problem type who buys anything she wants and leaves no lane of approach, having clogged it with her own purchases? This is a very frustrating type, because you can surmise what she likes but have to assume she has it. 

⭐ Is this person one to drop hints? If so, respond positively enough to encourage her but not enough to assure her. (My wife will text me something she definitely would like, but it's always a side attraction gift, not the main event.) 

Well, good luck out there, people. When all else fails, a gift certificate is not the worst idea, but it always tells the person I LOVE YOU EXACTLY THIS MANY DOLLARS AND 00 CENTS, which isn't very romantic. 

I think my mom would have appreciated that much thought, though. Although Dad did build a nice shed. 

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.

A guy could get kilt.

Saw a fellow in church wearing a skirt yesterday. Of course it was not a skirt, but a kilt; it was plaid and had one of those crazy sideways/diagonal belts visible under his jacket. 

I suppose there was a time when you would always assume a bearded man in a skirt was a Scotsman of some sort. Now, however hirsute the chap may be, your first thought could be: It's a guy who thinks he's a girl. That just seems to be the going idea these days.

Looking way back, however, history had lots of men in skirt or "skort" outfits or the like. For example: 

Ancient Egypt: Everyone wore the shendyt, a skirt-like wraparound loincloth. Couldn't tell the girls from the guys by the clothes. I guess you could look at their chests.

Ancient Rome: Lots of long tunics, belted or not, or the toga virilis, a very manly, masculine sort of working toga, not a dress at all. Still no pants on the horizon. 

Greece, 6th century BC: First pants spotted. That is, not that they were decorated with spots; they emerged for use by horsemen around this time, as reported by Greeks. Eventually pants would become a land-office business. 

Scotsmen, 1700s: Started back up with the skirts early in the century. Theory has emerged that they just were waiting for someone to make a remark so they could kick some ass. 

Then we move into the modern era. Men in skirts included:

1950s: Scotsmen, Milton Berle

1960s: Scotsmen, normal men turned into Scotsmen by aliens

1970s: Scotsmen, Benny Hill

1980s: Scotsmen, New Wave bands, professional transvestites

2020s: Scotsmen, TikTok influencers, many others

I'm going to stick with pants, personally. No skirts for me. I look bad enough in shorts as it is. And considering what a hash I made of learning to play the recorder in grammar school, there is no way I can ever play the bagpipes. It would take an invasion by alien blancmanges to make that happen.

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.

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. 

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. 

When push comes to shovel.

As I write this Monday evening, it has been snowing for almost 24 hours. It may continue for another 24 hours. I just shoveled the walkway for the second time. The snow was more than two feet deep.

Been a while since we had a real roof crusher in these parts. Haven't missed it, either. But, bad back and all, I braved the weather to do my bit to keep things clear. In fact, I even wrote a song about it. A ballad. The Ballad of Me.

❆❅💪👨❆❄

Oh, Frederick Key was a mighty man
And a mighty man was he
He strode outside to fight the storm
With great integrity

Frederick took his mighty blade
A shovel scoop of yellow
And went to work upon that snow
Like a mighty, manly fellow

He shoveled here and shoveled there
Flinging snowflakes like a nitwit
He made it to his parking pad
Thirty-five steps on his FitBit 

Then Frederick took his mighty phone
And with his great know-how
He called a man most manfully
To come and bring his plow

Then Frederick took himself inside
Having made his mighty call
And took with mighty manliness 
Some mighty Tylenol

☃🌨⛇

I think schoolkids will be singing this one some day, don't you? 

NOW it's four a.m. on Tuesday and I just shoveled the walk for the... fifth time? I've lost count. The bulk of the storm is over but it looks like we'll have some flakes around here for the remainder of the day, self included. The dogs, who woke me up at three, are sleeping peacefully in the hall. I'm going to put my head on the table and blarg. Blarg.

Fitness resolution! With steroids!

Hello, fellow kids, and welcome to 2021! No more loafing around, moaning about how bad things are. This is a new year! Time to run around and get fit while we moan about how bad things are! And look what I got for Christmas. 

My wife gave me an Inspire 2 FitBit, that step-counting marvel that can help you track heartrate, sleep quality, calories burned and consumed, water drunk, and alert you to calls and messages on your phone. It's a marvel! And it also tells time! Which is nice, since the watchband just broke on my wristwatch.

So on day one, which was actually December 27, I set it up, strapped it on, and went about my business. I wanted to see how active I am on an average day with no particular extra effort. As it is, I finished with more than 8,000 steps, which made me glad. They say you should walk 10,000 steps for baseline exercise each day (or do they? Well, it's better than most of us get). I did not have the thing on at the start of my day, so maybe I did walk 10,000 steps -- could not tell. 

On day two I was welded to my desk to meet a deadline, and yet by bedtime I had about 9,500 steps. Awesome! I figured that the next day, when I had more liberty, I would pulverize the 10,000 goal. FitBit's little screen would blare at me: "HOLD ON, COWBOY! YOU WAY TOO ACTIVE!" And I would laugh! "Ha ha! I am just warming up!"

And indeed, thanks to a sudden desire by large dog Tralfaz for a large walk, I had more than 4,000 steps behind me by nine a.m. I was going to RAWK this one!

And then this:

While I was working my wrist started to itch. Naturally, I had a lovely red rash around it where the FitBit lay. So this is where the steroid portion comes in -- corticosteroid gel, to get the itch to stop and remove the rash. And FitBit went onto the charger. 

Three days later I still have the stupid rash, although less red and not so itchy. FitBit says this probably came from wearing it too tight, and I think that's true -- you're not supposed to wear it as tight as a regular watch. The plastic doesn't breathe. I've worn my share of cheap-ass watches with plastic bands, but I usually take the watch off when I get home. You're supposed to wear the FitBit all the time -- to bed as well. You can even wear it in the shower. Got to count those shower steps!

When I was out and about yesterday I wanted a watch to keep track of time, so I put it on my right wrist, which felt very weird. Late on New Year's Eve I started to fear a rash was developing on my right wrist, so I took it off. It may have just been dry skin from winter air and dangling the dogs' leashes around that wrist.

I don't know about this whole thing. I would like it to work out, but I'm depressed. Like Rodney Dangerfield, I feel like things happen to me that don't happen to normal people. I never had any real skin problems, hardly any acne, for which I am grateful, but now this? And winter skin so rough I could sand cherry wood with it.

Well, I did get something in my stocking to help with that: 

Yes! MAN LOTION! By MAN STUFF, INC.! It works well and smells -- well, like something that wouldn't embarrass a manly masculine man's man. As they say, "NO GIRLY-GIRL SCENT: If smelling like roses isn't your deal, skip the unisex hand and body cream. Man Lotion has a fresh, clean scent – never overpowering – with no strong, lingering odor." But I may be too manly for it -- I actually broke the pump while unscrewing it. Too much man for Man Lotion to take!

But this kind of thing doesn't work on rashes. Only dry skin. Wah! 2021 sucks!