Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktMitt Romney is looking like a better candidate all the time.
For everyone who ever wondered where the heck some of Superman’s powers came from in Superman II:
Seriously? Super-Kiss? The ability to pull the S off his chest and make it a big cellophane wrapper? And the bad guys “finger beams”? Where are Kryptonian “finger-beams” in the Superman canon?
Susan Solomon chats up stem cells at TED. She brings up Vioxx, a longstanding pharmaceutical bugaboo of mine. Vioxx, for many users, was a miracle drug. For a significant minority of users, it killed them. So, instead of changing the prescription and treatment model, they recalled the drug and took it off the market. Apparently, researching drugs with stem cell cultures could allow us to identify where certain people would be helped and others would die with the use of a drug. That would be a good thing, I would think.
•••
Is Obesity the Greatest Threat To Our National Security? It’s not a good thing, I know. I’ve recently lost 70 lbs myself, and it’s better being thin than fat, all things considered. But I’m not sure I’ve improved our national security by doing so a single iota. I believe this may be hyperbole.
At least we know the Obama’s aren’t pandering to the fat vote. Although I’m not sure that’s politically smart, given how many of them there are.
Do tax cuts for the rich help the economy? Some say no.
•••
Is romance and lots of support and loving and no expectation of anything in return? Not according to Athol Kay on his blog (Married Man Sex Life), and not according to his multitudes of readers, and advice seekers, on the forums of said blog. It can be eye opening, yet I’ve found my experience dovetails with much of what I read.
Being a jerk doesn’t necessarily lead to a great marriage, but being nice and sweet and supportive (at least, for the guy) definitely doesn’t lead there, either. If you’re a hyper-supportive beta-male (like me), you might think it’s just your situation, but apparently it’s played out again and again and again in marriages across the world:
Boy meets girl, boy and girl get married, guy is super-supportive and tries to be romantic and sweet, girl loses attraction, sex practically vanishes. Girl tells boy he needs to be more supportive and nicer and possibly richer and also more obedient and then she will find him more attractive. Boy tries to comply, girl becomes more distant, more nagging, more shrewish, less affectionate, sex disappears completely.
Then, if you read the stories, girl, as often as not, takes her love to town, cuckolds her husband, and then when her adultery is finally discovered, blames him and tries to arrange it so she can have her cake and eat it too (exciting lover and poor beta-husband’s wallet). I haven’t exactly experienced that, but it’s pretty clear lots of guys do. Don’t go searching for Talk About Marriage unless you want to be deeply, deeply depressed.
The answer? Guys need to be men, the captains of their ship, and step up to the plate and have some balls. Turns out, neither Oprah nor Doctor Phil, and not even John Gray (although I devoured his stuff in my late 20s, early 30s, with pretty much zero benefit) have the right advice for men. The right advice turns out to be: man up, and don’t put up with bullshit. Who knew?
Don’t even get me started on the Manosphere. They definitely don’t like the womyn much, or our feminized culture.
•••
I meant to post this yesterday in celebration of ATiM’s anniversary. However, life gets in the way. Since I did not, I get to share this experience:
Coming back from my daughter’s dance class last, I went through a DUI checkpoint that was like nothing I’d ever seen. They randomly picked a stretch of road about a block long, shut off two lanes on either side so all traffic had to be funneled through one lane. There were about 20 officers in the road, about 50 or 60 on the sides, some of them probably technicians or other support people. Along one side there were five or six cruisers with their bars lit, on the other side there were about 25. Going through it, they checked my tags, asked me where I was going, checked my license (checked the cup holders, natch, looking for open containers), and made sure I and my little girl were properly seat-belted.
They were polite as could be, but it was an odd experience. I can’t imagine the open container and seat belt citations could possible pay for a quarter of the expense of such a large operation. There was too much time for seeing the enormity of the stake out and actually getting there for folks not to have plenty of opportunity to put their seat belts on and hide any open containers; they’d have to be actively drunk, and seriously so, to get caught. I heard officers complaining that they’d checked over 40 cars and got nothing. Then I heard another say he saw an open container, but the guy had zoomed on out and gotten away. Nearly 30 cruisers, bars lit, and no one sitting by to chase down a fleeing violator.
Very strange.
Filed under: Bits and Pieces, Mitt Romney | Tagged: Mitt Romney, Superman, Vioxx |
All Things in Moderation 
“asked me where I was going”
may I ask how you responded?
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The return of “Bits and Pieces”! More vids to decrease my productivity …
nova, so what is the correct response?
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silence — they’re trying to build a case against you. say nothing.
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Wherever the four winds blow?
Otherwise, NoVA has the drill down.
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Gotcha. Thanks.
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@Novahockey: “may I ask how you responded?”
“I’m going home,” is what I said. My daughter piped up: “You said we were going to McDonalds!” – “Yes,” I replied. “McDonald’s, then home.”
Also asked where we’d been. I also answered that honestly. My daughter was in the backseat, in her leotard, anxious to get to McDonald’s and get her M&M McFlurry, so I’m not going to take a stand for civil liberties (sorry).
I think most of the questions were geared towards taking my measure: was I nervous, punchy, stoned or drunk? Could I be a kidnapper? A deadbeat dad taking flight with his daughter? I don’t think they actually cared where I had been, or where I was going.
It was a surreal experience.
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I remember being a freshman in college and my intro to government professor (my favorite professor of all time) asked us a hypothetical involving voluntarily giving up a DNA sample if a rape had occurred on our campus (800 students or so). Most people, including myself, raised our hand when asked if we would give a sample voluntarily? Our professor quickly set us straight. Ever since then, and this was only reinforced in law school, I tell everyone to not tell the cops anything.
Michi- New gravatar per your request. Also, I think that if you click on my profile you will be able to see larger versions of that picture and one or two others.
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I don’t have the secret to marriage, either, but I think it takes two to make it work.
No matter what one may do to hold it together it will fold if the other wants to fold it.
Rosanne and I are as happy with each other after 16 years as we were dating, if not as uh -ecstatic.
My first marriage foundered on my wife’s discovery of drug abuse and my second – well, in her words, she was far more stable when I met her. Nuff said.
Good luck in that Rosanne was the woman she remains and I am still the man that she wanted. So I was 1 for 3 on marriages and 4 for 4 on kids. And I always tried to be respectful, but late in my first two marriages, from a distance. The first two kids went with me.
So I guess I don’t buy alpha and beta male stuff. Appropriate boundaries just mean knowing where I end and where you begin. That means not trying to change the other one. It means understanding change will happen no matter what. It means not having to stay for destructive change, like alcohol or cocaine. It means being responsible for your own conduct, not for someone else’s [and being responsible to the kids – they have to be removed from the path of destruction].
Love is not want or need. It is trust, respect, and affection, deep enough to want the other person to be all she can be as she understands it. Sometimes, even in healthy change, that means love has to let go of the marriage, but that is rare, from what I have seen. I saw it once. Those two remained very close friends.
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http://kut.org/2012/09/ut-campus-evacuated/
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I appreciate that it’s easy to get through the check point and move on with life. I’m traveling later this year with family. normally, I make a point to opt out of the scan. but with my wife and 3-year-old? Maybe that’s the right time to opt out. but i don’t want to use my son as a prop to illustrate the madness in the system.
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@markinaustin: “So I guess I don’t buy alpha and beta male stuff.”
It’s just a model for describing observable phenomenon. What’s amazing is that it is observable. The tendency of people who do not know each other and have no direct experience of each other to say and do the exact same things when presented with certain behaviors . . . it’s impressive. Things I would have though would have been unique to my situations are played out over and over again, using the exact same words and behaviors, in so many relationships.
There is a lot of dubious stuff in the evolutionary psychology pimped by the Manosphere and practitioners of Game. But the stories of husbands supplicating to their wives and getting the often identical responses, often word for word . . . I may not describe it very well, but sometimes it seems that things you would never think are hardwired or particularly gender related seem to be. He does X, she does Y, over a thousand relationships, down to the tiniest details. It’s a little disturbing. Whether a person buys the alpha/beta stuff or not, it becomes clear that we are (not any of us) unique little snowflakes. Whatever bizarre argument we had with our spouse 10 years ago about some bizarre circumstance, dozens or hundreds of people have had the identical argument, using identical words and rhetorical devices, losing their cools at the same places, saying the same stupid thing they shouldn’t have said right after she brought up that thing from ten years ago . . .
I believe in the alpha and beta stuff. Because I’m way too beta, always have been, still am, and I see the effect of it. I do not enjoy conflict. I’ve applied alpha in the past and been treated better. I stop, I get treated worse. It’s predictable as turning on a light switch. At the same time, it ain’t me, and I always end up pulling back. I would like more respect and affection, but I’m just naturally the guy who’ll go out to the car and get the wife’s purse when she is perfectly capable of doing it herself, or make my wife’s coffee in the morning, every morning, to the point where she starts complaining if it isn’t done in a timely fashion.
There’s something to it. I’ve read stories where the person’s experience is identical to mine in almost every detail. It’s freaky. How can the interactions between two people be so frickin’ identical? Not the actions of one person, but the actions and reactions of two people over a long period of time?
… we are not special little snowflakes. We are software agents interacting with other software agents prone to repeat identical patterns when when interacting at similar points, whether we’re in Florida or Oregon . . . or even the UK.
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KW, I just lost a humorous response to the ether, so all I have time to re-write is that I am not surprised that patterns repeat. And I am not surprised that two folks who do not have appropriate boundaries are abuser and abused, or user and used. I am suggesting only that if both folks in the partnership were actually really happy alone they can be happy with each other, because they will feel no desire to be controlling or submissive. Put even one unhappy camper into a relationship and as soon as the new wears off the relationship gets infected.
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@markinaustin: “Put even one unhappy camper into a relationship and as soon as the new wears off the relationship gets infected.”
Yeah, I think it just characterize about 80% of relationships. Of course, one person having BPD or being a drug abuser, etc., queers it from word go, where no sort of change, or relationship model, can have much impact (other than leaving the crazy/addicted so-and-so as being the ultimate outcome).
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KW, this is not original with me, but it’s an ode to alpha male:
All men, whether married or single, are to model masculinity in
their various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive dominance, a non-verbal nature, an innate ability to understand the workings of any machine merely by scowling at it or at most kicking it a few times, and a surpassing disinterest in any of the fine or performing arts or in a household and tasks required therein; further, they must play a preeminent role in all financial, political, outdoor culinary and entertainment decisions made on behalf of any mixed-gender group of which they are members.
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