Just the other day, I attended the funeral of my late grandfather. He had served through the second world war and ate thirteen bullets for his troubles. One of the bullets went through his head and several went through one his legs, crippling him and any athletic ambitions after the war. Despite that, he outlived all of the doctors who told him he would die after the way and clung stubbornly to life until the ripe old age of 89.
Leading up the funeral, I had done a lot of thinking. People say that once your parents die, you begin to come to grips with your own mortality. With the death of my last grandfather, I’ve started to come to grips with the mortality of my parents, of whom I’ve grown quite fond of in the last couple decades. With my increasing ability to understand the world around me and communicate the ideas from my head to people, I’ve developed a healthy rapport and mutual respect with my parents that I didn’t have even four years ago.
In his memory, I’ll dedicate this week’s posts to him.
Think about playing chess. When you play the game, you try to outsmart your opponent to checkmate his king. As you get better at playing the game, you learn to think several moves ahead. As you start to get to good at playing the game, you start to think ten or more moves ahead.
With relationships, every day you deal with the relationship, you’re playing a game of reverse chess. You play according to how the relationship is today, and how it was three hours, three days, three weeks, or three months ago. Women, with their masterful memories, lodging exact dates of arguments, what you said verbatim, and other otherwise innocuous actions play the game this way. This is why I think guys are surprised when relationships fail – they fail to think far enough in the past and fail to accurately identify fault lines in the relationship.
Players who find themselves surprised may accurate identify fault lines, but find themselves being outclassed in the ‘reverse chess match’ if they don’t deal with them right away.
Not much of interest is known about the founding Fathers of America. Even less is taught in schools. Yet, every once a blue moon, something comes out. Yes. Sometimes on yahoo. Today I point out to you the fascinating drinking habits of the founding Fathers. Our highlight will be the drinking habits of one Luther Martin:
Luther Martin
Of the Maryland lawyer who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence on the grounds that it insufficiently respected states rights, historian Lawrence Goldstone wrote: “No one, perhaps in the whole of American history, could drink with Luther Martin.” The “heaviest drinker of that period of heavy drinking men” would excuse his habit with quips like “In the heat of the summer, my health requires that I should drink in abundance to supply the amazing waste from perspiration.” The brilliant Martin was high-functioning enough to get away with it, though sometimes he had to get creative: once when representing a Quaker in court he committed to “not drink a drop,” so instead poured 90-proof brandy over bread, ate it with a fork and knife, and then proceeded to win.
Enjoy the rest of that article responsibly, please.
A post for the younger fellows and close to completely inexperienced with girls crowd.
For the longest time, I was not really sure when a girl wanted to kiss me. If you’ll recall, this inability to read women manifested in quite a memorable lesson.
About three years ago, I took a girl to what’s called Midwinter Formal, a special dance. She was a friend of a friend, red headed, tall, and not too bad looking up close. When she came to the dance, she cleaned up well and had a nicer figure than her Facebook photos suggested.
After dancing the night away, playing the meet, fuck, kill game (and constantly picking people I knew she’d say she kill), I could tell she was having a good time. We got to slow dancing. I took a few liberties with my hand placement without being too brazen. It got the point where I’d notice her staring in my eyes and not moving her head when my face was closer to hers. Eventually, I moved in and she closed the rest of the distance resulting in a memorable night whereby my dog tags jingling in the dark of night alerted my 6 roommates that my was not quite over.
The lesson didn’t hit me until I asked my virgin, ginger roommate how his night went.
Me: Did you have a good time?
Him: Why yes, I did.
Me: Did you kiss her?
Him: No.
Me: Why not?
Him: It was not the right time. She wasn’t in the right place for it right then.
Me: Did you ever have a moment where she was looking in your eyes and you found yourself thinking, “What in the world is she looking at?”
Him: Yes.
Me: That’s when you should have kissed her.
If a girl wants to kiss you, you’ll know by how she does not recoil to your touch and doesn’t make much effort to move her head around when you move in and out of close proximity of her face. She’ll start to look in your eyes with a longing gaze that you may not recognize until you kiss a few more girls.
If you ever catch yourself wondering what she’s looking at, stop thinking about it and kiss her.
Whitewraitheposts about the 3,400 new regulations Obama passed right before Thanksgiving, while the nation was focused on Ferguson.
Vatic Note: You can bet these regulations are not for our benefit, that is for sure. One of the most effective protests is “non compliance”. It has worked many times across the globe and is still being used today. Pass thousands of regulations, but what good are they if not a single person follows them? They are expensive and useless and why???? BECAUSE CURRENT LAW AND REGULATIONS ARE NOT ENFORCED except against the 99%.
I haven’t posted this past week because exams start on Saturday, 13. December and it’s time I get busy studying for them.
Also – most recently – I was dealing with an incident from the weekend before Thanksgiving. I had hoped to escape the weekend unscathed – but unfortunately, the repercussions followed me back from furlough. For my actions, and due to my inability to argue a key point without impugning my honor, I was ‘awarded’ the highest punishment this fine Institution has to offer.
A fitting end for an unrepentantly miserable semester.
Before I take the time to write a proper wrap of my #NoNothingNovember, I’ll include this brief thought I had from a conversation I had with my best friend last night.
As you may recall, I once wrote a post on Sisyphus and the human condition.
“…to be human is to struggle. Life is struggle”
When I was talking with my buddy, conversation turned to that theme again and I said:
Humans need a mountain to climb. For men, that mountain is accomplishment, accolades, and other achievements. For women, the mountain is you. Don’t give them a peak.
To clarify what I mean you could go back and refer to what I said further, in my Sisyphus post:
Inertia is death…
Why would a man wish for a neverending mountain? Because…at the top of the mountain, it’s nothing but downhill from there.
But there’s a man who’s said it better than I – for, though he uses more words saying it in the long form, a certain nuance is made apparent; and that nuance might make all the difference. But I want you to focus on a specific part – which commenter Earl pontificates upon.
After reading his post for the third or fourth time; after my thoughts writing this post and my thoughts reading his post coalesced; I posted this comment.
Upon further reflection, I think the issue is that one cannot be “satisfied” with a women in a relationship, especially if she is “the one”. For the day you are satisfied is the day she is not.
Satisfaction is the peak from which she can only see downhill.
The higher value the man, the steeper the climb.
The less secure the man, the steep the descent.
And the more “game” a man has, the steeper he can make the ascent, the more gradual he can make the descent, and perhaps he might be able to convince her to make one more trip back up, for a better look at the view if he finds her on the way back down.
I don’t think I have it completely correct. I might not even be close. I am, however, getting closer.
Wald
This concept and the one explored in this post are related. But how and to what extent?
Every now and then I have random thoughts which I think I should really write down.
So here’s round two:
I was thinking about sitting down in class at university and how apathetic about my studies I was. Then I thought about moving around. Walking. Why didn’t I just run everywhere? If I did, I would get places faster and surely be able to run faster and farther than before.
Then it hit me.
People complain about obesity in kids these days. I remember reading about tips on “avoiding a sedentary lifestyle” when I was in high school in England. But all of that’s bullshit.
It’s schools, man! Kids go to school and sit on their asses for 8 hours straight. That’s 5 days a week, 36 (roughly) weeks out of the year, for 12 goddamn years. Then at college, you get to pay for the privilege of sitting on your ass for 4 more years. It’s no wonder that so many kids skip classes to go drinking, to sleep, to do anything other than sit down and pretend to care about the memorization of bullshit.
No wonder kids are conditioned to sit around all day and do nothing. Heck, I hear schools nowadays are even getting rid of recess. People forget that kids have tons of energy and drug them when they find that those poor little guys have trouble sitting still.
So, I’m now on Thanksgiving furlough. I’ve got 6 more days of vacation and 6 more days of November.
So far, this month has seen mixed results.
Unfortunately, my efforts to achieve no fap this month have been fruitless. Even when I had sex, I still ached for release; and with the easy access of internet, I always got it. I’m not used to denying myself, I’ll say. It’s also hard when there are many moments where I’m alone and prone to relentless boredom.
There were two times that I did no-fap for one month. The first time was right after freshman year of university; I read the website “yourbrainonporn” and got scared. I didn’t beat it for a month I was so worried about what I’d done to myself. For the first week, I got hornier. It became harder to ignore; the second week increased those feelings. But by the third week, I had largely forgotten about it. Sure, I woke up with a hard-on most mornings and seemed very aware of the opposite sex’s features in conversation, but it was largely in the back of my mind. Ditto for the fourth week. Then I was in Germany and went to a Thai massage parlour my first week in Berlin. I didn’t realize what kind of place it was (I really did only want a massage). And next thing I knew I was getting a hand job from the masseuse. She took a long time and I actually laughed at her (it went on for ten minutes where I was hard but nothing else happened). Finally, I finished myself a shot a load so heavy it was heard around the world (and got on her face a little).
The second time I was at LDAC at Ft. Knox. Why didn’t I diddle myself for a month there? It was simple – I was so damn busy that I didn’t think about it or even have the time. When I saw my girlfriend on my first day back, though – I was quite voracious. She gave me quite the warm welcome, which I still remember in exquisite detail.
On the plus side, my goal for writing at least two articles a week has succeeded and accomplished the main goal my #NoNothingNovember; to get writing again. Yes, there were some weeks where I barely cranked out two posts, maybe one was a progress report on #NoNothingNovember itself and the other was shitty and short. It doesn’t matter now. I’m writing again and the mindset that comes with it is nearly back. I’m starting think about the articles I could write with conversations with my friends and my father.
In the end, I’m on my way to complete one out of two goals I had for this month and I am completely happy with it.
