Gun up

I've been thinking about the bad boy thing versus the nerd thing, and was wondering why I never seemed to take any sort of nerd hit even when women found out that I was not only a hard core gamer, but actually developed games and wrote reviews of them. Then I realized what it was. It was the AK-47 under the bed. Or maybe the AR-15. Or perhaps the SKS. Or the twin-barrel 20-gauge.

The point is, one of the best ways for a man to exhibit some undeniable bad boy credentials is to own a few firearms and shoot well. And women love going to the gun range; even women who are vehemently anti-gun will not only agree to go, but will usually love it. You can see that their physical reaction to guns going off in their vicinity is almost sexual. Even the most mild-mannered, sweater-wearing milksop will tend go up considerably in a woman's eyes when he puts together a close grouping at the maximum range and the guys on the lanes on either side of him are spraying wildly at targets set up at one-third the range.

Think about how many movies concern around women getting turned on by the guy who says he's a secret agent and shows her a gun. Think about why women love men in uniform and what that represents. Then think about how much more powerfully attractive it is when she knows, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you're easily capable of shooting out both eyes of the loudmouthed poser with the motorcycle from the other side of the room.

So, buy at least two pistols, one 9mm and one .40 or .357, and learn how to use them reasonably well. It's an easy way to arrange a date too, as you can simply mention that you're going to the range and ask if she wants to join you. If she's worried or a little nervous about the idea, just reassure her that she doesn't have to use the big scary gun, she can use the cute little one. There are few DHVs like her hearing a pop-pop-pop when she shoots, then hearing you firing bang-bang-bang. But don't overdo it. Not only does .50 caliber smack of Freudian issues, but hearing one go off in the next lane can give even the most experienced male shooter heart palpitations. Girls find guns sexy, but they're not so keen on quasi-artillery.

R.I.P. Munson

Susan Walsh informs us that the indefatigable Munson has died:

This morning I received an email from Susan Munson letting me know that Tom died yesterday afternoon. I know that all of you who read his brilliant, irreverent and hilarious comments here will grieve this loss with me. Although Munson kept us posted on his illness and his prognosis, I realized when I heard of his passing that I have been waiting for Munson to come back and begin writing again. It’s devastating to imagine this blog without him, and he leaves a vast hole in the space he filled with his intelligence and kindness.

Munson lived in Boise, Idaho. He was a prestigious lawyer, a devoted husband and dad to Paul, 23. He was so much larger than life – he was a reader, a philosopher, a brilliant observer, an astute historian and an incredible character. He embraced every experience to the fullest, including mental illness and his own final battle with cancer.

He was a good man and an insightful observer of the human condition, but above all, he was a man who left this world undefeated and unbowed.

"Many people have been telling me, in reference to my condition, to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”. Dylan Thomas epic lines are certainly moving. But I am called to remember God’s response to Job when he questioned God’s running of things, and specifically His undeserved punishment of him. I can’t do it justice, but God comes out of a whirlwind and says to Job Where were you when I created the universe? Tell Me how I did it, if you have the understanding? Did you give yourself life? Have you so many days you can tell Me how to move the stars of the Pleiades, or scatter the ones of Orion? Who gave you understanding of your own heart? Who gave you wisdom? Can you even perceive the breadth of the earth? Do you water the deserts where no man has set foot? Do you feed the lions? Do you keep the waves at bay, or know how light is created? Do you know how to make rivers, that the denizens thereof have homes? Where have you such understanding that you can question anything I do? Who gave you this responsibility?

I am not Job. I have been blessed with abundance."

"I am not Job." One simply cannot eulogize a man who speaks for himself with such succinct eloquence.

Marriage, the Chicago way

Athol has some advice for this husband, who seems to be going about handling a problematic situation more or less the right way.:

My wife’s queen bee friend talked a bunch of single and married friends into a five day trip flying to a major city. I expressed my extreme displeasure with this since they are doing tons of stuff I would love to do there with her.

I have decided to treat this as a shit test and am agreeing and amplifying now that I have failed to talk her out of it (they scheduled it pretty quickly without much more than a couple of mentions). I told her I am great now with separate vacations (very enthusiastic). I have also talked with the other husbands and we are planning a similar trip like a Caribbean trip. Her first hearing of this left her scrambling for reasons for me not to go. She even backed off of doing other girls birthday trips where earlier she had alluded.

First of all, there would appear to be problems in the marriage that the big trip is bringing out of the woodwork, not only with the reader's marriage, but some of the others as well. However, one mistake was made. So long as the husbands are planning a rival trip, it shouldn't have been to the Caribbean, but to Thailand. Just to, you know, see those fascinating ancient temples and all.

Ness: I want to get Capone! I don't know how to do it.

Malone: You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!

If a group of wives are determined to go on such a "get our groove back" trip over their husbands' objections, at least one of those marriages is very likely on the downhill slide. The problem isn't necessarily the trip per se, but rather, the disrespect and lack of consideration involved.

The destination matters too. If it's the Caribbean, you might as well sell the house and have the papers waiting for her when she gets back. Countries with beaches and impoverished Africans are the middle-aged female equivalent of Bangkok and the Philippines; a survey of female tourists to three Dominican resorts found that one-third of them admitted to having had sex with the locals.

However, it's important not to judge women for doing this, since they're not doing it for sexual reasons, but because they are economic philanthropists.

All the respondents said they did not pay for the sexual services that men provided during their vacations at resorts. But many of the women explained that they paid money for sex as they treated it as economic aid to the resort staff or even the local economy.

Note that even when a woman is paying for prostitutes, the hamster spinneth.

Girl sings about Game

As you know, I think pop music provides a useful insight into the mindset of the masses. Not because its authors are so magnificently empathetic or emotive, but because what appeals to the masses versus what does not is instructive concerning what is going on inside all those little irrational minds.

Call Me Maybe is a catchy, well-crafted little pop song that perfectly illustrates some of the core concepts of Game, so perfectly that it wouldn't surprise me if it was written by a man cognizant of the theory.

(Checks Wikipedia) Yep, the authors are listed as Carly Rae Jepsen, (the singer), Josh Ramsay, and Tavish Crowe. Given my experience in the music industry, I'd guess Jepsen probably provided the base concept and a line or two, but the men wrote most of the lyrics and all of the music. Anyhow, here's the chorus:

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me, maybe?
It's hard to look right, at you baby, but here's my number, so call me, maybe?
Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me, maybe?
And all the other boys, try to chase me, but here's my number, so call me, maybe?

What do we observe here?

1. No time limit. No concerns about it being too soon.

2. The number is provided without request.

3. She can't meet his eyes. In other words, he exhibits dominance.

4. The interest - and loyalty - of other males is of no interest to her and instills no attraction for them in her.

5. She acknowledges that she is departing from female social norms, "this is crazy", but she does it anyhow.

This is what actual female attraction looks like. This is what Alphas see on a regular basis, if not necessarily every day. This is what it looks like if a girl is genuinely into you. If she is not behaving in this manner, it doesn't mean you can't seduce her or somehow attract her, but she is not actively attracted to you.

Note that the girl isn't being a slut or anything, she's just sending an unmistakable indicator of interest that cannot be misinterpreted. That's what very attracted women do. Here is the lesson: the level of a woman's attraction to a man is measured by the directness of her indicator of interest.

I note that the video is a subversion of the song from start to finish, not merely in the obvious way, but in the way that the singer is providing indirect indicators of interest, in which the humor is provided by the clumsy obviousness of them.

Lie to your kids

If I could give just one piece of advice this Father's Day to the fathers around the world, it would be this. Lie to your children. Don't give them a straight answer to anything. When they ask you questions with straightforward answers, throw them curve balls.

Why? They absolutely love it. At various times in their lives, my children have been convinced that hippopotamuses require a special counting system, that people in Sweden don't wear clothes, that there are fire-breathing dragons still living in the mountains of Italy, and that the Minnesota Vikings will one day win the Super Bowl. Okay, perhaps that last lie is a little bit too cruel.

But there is nothing that speaks more of family than sitting at a dinner table where the father is calmly eating his dinner, the children are screaming with laughter, and the wife is rolling her eyes with a hint of a smile on her lips. It is a father's job to protect his children, and allowing them to preserve their childish joy and innocence as long as possible is one of the greatest gifts a man can give them.

They won't remember how you paid the bills. They won't remember how you taught them to read or disciplined them. But they'll absolutely remember every stupid, silly thing you told them when they were small and their eyes will light up when they do. And you know without even asking that a man is a father when a little girl he's never met before walks up to him as he sits on a park bench and asks him if it's true that people in Sweden don't wear clothes.

"Well, of course not," he answered without batting an eye, despite the t-shirt he was wearing which said "Sverige" on it. And when confronted with the evidence that he was, in fact, wearing clothes at the moment despite being Swedish, he wasn't lost for an immediate response.

"But we're not in Sweden now, are we? If we were in Sweden, then of course we wouldn't be wearing any clothes! Imagine that! Wearing clothes in Sweden?"

After the interrogation was complete and the interrogator ran off to the slide, I asked him how many kids he had. "Three," he replied. I'd never seen him before and I haven't seen him since, but I have absolutely no doubt that he's a great dad. Happy Father's Day to him and all the other dads out there.

Attractional inertia

After Athol pointed out the obvious, which is to say that women are at their physical peak in their early twenties and forty-somethings are not as hot as twenty-somethings, one of his female readers proceeds to reach precisely the wrong conclusion:

As for me, a married woman approaching 40, this post touched a sore spot. When I was in my early 20s, I was a superhot 9. I am now in what P.J. O’Rourke described as the “Hell of the formerly cute.” Married my husband and over the years let myself go. He’s told me he wants me to get back in shape, and I am complying. I’m currently working my tush off (literally) to get back into the best shape possible, and was pretty excited about how my appearance is improving — but hearing the truth about my age this starkly is demotivating. It makes me wonder what the point is, when even at my best at 40 or 50 I’ll be totally eclipsed by even average 20-somethings.

I won’t wail and gnash my teeth over whether or not Athol’s point is valid. It’s true and there’s just no denying it. What I will say, from a feminine POV, is that being reminded of it taps into the dark recesses of my mind where I think, in spite of maximizing my attractiveness, performing a daily exorcism of all bitchiness, and actually enjoying frequent sex with my husband, he’s looking at superhot 20-somethings and thinking “why in the hell am I stuck with this old hag?”

I really don’t know how to put Athol’s post into perspective, since I don’t know to what degree other factors motivate my husband to stay with me and how these factors compete against the allure of a young, attractive woman. What I do know is that I suddenly feel a lot less sexy.

The key is to understand that the thought has probably never crossed his mind. Physical decline is inevitable for everyone. I keep myself in pretty good shape with weightlifting, running, and soccer, good enough to occasion frequent questions concerning my age from younger guys at the gym. And yet, it would be downright laughable for me to pretend I am anywhere nearly as strong, as fit, or as fast as when I was in my early twenties and training seven days a week doing martial arts.

I can remember to the day when my speed vanished. I was thirty-two and in the middle of an indoor soccer game when a loose ball popped out towards the opposing goal. I knew I could get there before the goalie... only somehow, I didn't. I wasn't the only one who noticed this, as my brother asked me after the game about what happened. He'd seen me play for years when we were younger and we'd played two seasons together as adults, and he knew something was wrong.

Now, even in my forties I can still run quite well for a veteran player, and I blow by the defenders on the opposing teams in much the same manner as I did in the past. But when we play the club's first team, which is comprised of guys between 18 and 32, I seldom run past anyone as their speed, and especially their quickness, is just on a different level than mine.

Given my decline, a first team coach would promptly kick me to the curb, or as is more commonly the case, gently suggest that next season I might want to consider playing with the veterans. Why doesn't my wife do the same? Well, among other things, she couldn't care less how I play or who I beat to the ball, she just wants me to enjoy myself and stay out of the hospital.

Of course, it sounds absurd to suggest that a man's wife would kick one to the curb because his physical peak has passed, so how does it make any sense to imagine that a husband would be inclined to get rid of his wife simply because she isn't 22 anymore? Because there are more attractive women out there? There always were. There may be a few more than there were before, but he always had other options. Is a woman going to eventually be eclipsed by twenty-somethings? Of course, it is the way of the world, although to be honest, so many younger women are fat these days that perhaps it takes longer than it used to.

What I think the reader in the Hell of the Formerly Cute is missing is that men tend to possess what can be described as an attractional inertia with regards to the women of their youth. It is hard for us to clearly distinguish between the woman that we are with now and the woman that she was twenty years ago, so long as the changes are not too dramatic and thereby create a cognitive dissonance. Not only that, but the history of a couple's time together plays a big role, to say nothing of the natural chemistry, which doesn't necessarily change with age. An objective observer might claim she is not as beautiful as she was when we met, and yet I find her every bit as attractive as I did then, if not more so. It's not that I can't see the little changes that age has wrought, but I have to make a conscious effort to notice them. For the most part, I see her simply as who she is, the same slender, pretty blonde that she always has been.

This is why it is so tragic when women, particularly women over thirty, cast aside their husbands in search of something better. Because no matter whom they meet, no one will ever look at them again through love goggles, which like beer goggles, tend to make a man see a woman through a soft and flattering lens as her mythical and eternally youthful self rather than the harsh, objective light of reality.

There is nothing wrong with mourning the loss of one's youth. There are times when I look in the mirror and wonder who the hell is this large, hairy man with the tired eyes and shaved head staring back at me. He looks more like a minor heavy in a Guy Ritchie film than the young buck in a Fitzgerald novel I feel myself to be. But it is important to remember that one's external appearance is only one part of one's self, and one aspect of one's sex appeal.

There is only one fundamental rule of sexual attraction. No man can fake an erection. If he's got one, you've still got it. Perhaps not quite as much as you once did, but it's all you need.

Why she's not married

Tracy McMillan explains to single women why they aren't married:

1. You're a Bitch

Here's what I mean by bitch. I mean you're angry. You probably don't think you're angry. You think you're super smart, or if you've been to a lot of therapy, that you're setting boundaries. But the truth is you're pissed. At your mom. At the military-industrial complex. At Sarah Palin. And it's scaring men off. The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them.

This is true. Many women, far more women than most women honestly want to admit, are just bitches. They're mad at the world and they're going to take it out on anyone who gives them the opportunity. Most men who are even remotely attractive to women know this on some level and avoid such women like the plague.

2. You're Shallow

When it comes to choosing a husband, only one thing really, truly matters: character. So it stands to reason that a man's character should be at the top of the list of things you are looking for, right? But if you're not married, I already know it isn't. Because if you were looking for a man of character, you would have found one by now. Men of character are, by definition, willing to commit.

This isn't true. It is downright false to claim that character is defined by one's willingness to commit to a relationship. In fact, it takes character to be willing to honestly and openly announce one's unwillingness to commit. Also, McMillan seems to not notice that by taking this position, she has damned nearly all women under the age of thirty as being of low character. Is a woman who is focused on her education or career of intrinsically low character? Should men not therefore behave accordingly?

That being said, Laundry List women are shallow and their shallowness does cause them to reject many men who might well make excellent husbands.

3. You're a Slut

Hooking up with some guy in a hot tub on a rooftop is fine for the ladies of Jersey Shore -- but they're not trying to get married. You are. Which means, unfortunately, that if you're having sex outside committed relationships, you will have to stop. Why? Because past a certain age, casual sex is like recreational heroin -- it doesn't stay recreational for long.

This is true, but it misses the point. Men love sluts... but they don't want to marry women who have had sex with too many other men, with "too many" being a variable that primarily depends upon the man's own sexual history and sexual rank. A few men are fine with 20 or so, most find 10 to be the outside limit, and more than you might think consider 3 to be unacceptable. While it's true that emotionally bonding to unsuitable men doesn't help a woman get married, the bigger problem with sluttiness is that it renders a woman significantly less marriageable in male eyes. This doesn't mean that a known or perceived slut won't eventually get married, but she'll usually marry a lower quality, lower rank man than she could otherwise have obtained. That, or she'll misrepresent herself and build her marriage on a foundation of deceit.

More on the rest later....