Man Among Boys

This post has 546 words. It will take approximately 5 minutes, 27 secondes for reading it.

…you know what it is?…it’s dumb n*gga technology.  It lets dumb n*ggas,  talk to other dumb n*ggas, about dumb n*gga sh*t… – Gin Rummy, from Season One of “The Boondocks”

I like social media..for the most part.  Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms.  It’s a whole new way for people to communicate with each other no matter where they are in the world.  It’s a cheap and fun way to let people know what’s on your mind, or to update a quick status on what you’re up to.

It’s also a way for chickenheads to cluck across the internet.  So I’m going to put this one in the “Just Not Manly” category, even though it applies to women too.

What the hell is going on with some of the people on Twitter and Facebook?  People lost their damn minds over that little blue bird.  Maybe because they can be anonymous with a fake name and not have to meet people, but that’s no reason to get stupid.  Women are all over the web claiming how much the love God with their ass hanging out; the Lord don’t need to see ya thong.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for having fun, but some of this stuff is just stupid.  One tweet I saw the other day from a Tweeter with a lot of followers said

About to guzzle down some Hennessy like if it was (another Tweeter’s) d*ck…

First, she comes off like a drunk bitch.  Second, she comes off like a drunk bitch that makes her living on her knees.  Have some gotdamn self-respect.  I don’t understand what makes her think this is a good idea.  I’m not judging anyone…but she’s probably single and has been ran through like Adrian Peterson through the Minnesota Vikings offensive line.

That wasn’t an isolated incident.  Another one I saw from a young girl that said she wanted to ride a guy’s d*ck and lick the cum off.  The biggest problem I had was that Twit Pic looked like she was about 15.  At least she has a goal in life; most 15 year old girls just want to chase after Justin Bieber.

(Note:  I hate Bieber’s little punk ass, but I can’t knock his hustle.  He’s got about ½ a billion fans and Twitter followers, little boys and girls are putting his name in their screen names.  Can’t knock his hustle…but get a damn haircut.)

Fellas, you are not exempt.  Some of you are chickenheads, too.  Why does every dude who lifts two weights and gets a little bit of a pump feel the need to take his shirt off in his pic?  Cut that fruity sh*t out with that stupid stand-in-front-of-the-mirror-with-your-cell-camera-pose.  That is some really suspect sh*t.

Makes me want to go back to regular snail mail from the U.S. Postal Service.   It took forever to get a message across the street, but at least I didn’t have to worry about some idiot that wants to call himself YungSwole, or some other asshole standing looking tough in his bathroom showing his tattoos.  Moron.

Feel free to comment.

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This post has 736 words. It will take approximately 7 minutes, 21 secondes for reading it.

There is a powerful and very unappreciated weapon in a man’s arsenal, even if he doesn’t realize it.

When it comes to managing relationships, men are often bombarded with everything from opinions to wild rants from the women in their lives. We often don’t get a chance to respond, so at the first opportunity, a man will open his mouth and that’s when the debate begins about whatever is on her mind.  There usually isn’t a pause in the verbal war long enough to say anything, so we usually blurt our everything we can think of.  In effect, what we’ve done is throw away our most valuable weapon.

That weapon is called silence.  Wanna know how to throw a woman off her game in an argument?  Don’t respond.

She needs you to respond, fellas.  She needs you to try to argue why she’s not right, so she can argue with you more.  But it doesn’t matter if she’s right or not; she can out talk you.  You don’t have enough mental endurance to withstand the tongue-lashing she’s giving you.  Eventually, you break down, looking for the nearest alcoholic beverage you can find.

I’ve looked at a lot of situations and relationships, ranging from family members to friends to my own, and I noticed a pattern.  There were troubles in the relationship is the man opened up and expressed his feelings.  That’s not a natural place for us to be, in “Feelingsville.”  Women have the upper hand there.  When you express yourself, you are not only putting yourself in an unnatural place, you’re providing fuel for her response.  It’s like a fumble in football; you’ve not only lost an opportunity to score, you’ve usually given the other team great field position to score themselves.

We don’t give women enough credit some times.  Women are smart and cunning.  See fellas, this strategy has been going on for decades.  Little by little, you’ve been hearing that it’s ok to express your feelings and open up.  It’s ok to share your emotions and vent to your wife.   That’s some bullsh*t.  Whatever you express will be considered wrong, and then you’re pulled into a fight you can’t win.

Did Ward open up to June Cleaver? No.  Result, happy man.  Did Heathcliff open up to Claire Huxtable?  No. Result, happy man.  Did George open up to Weezie? No.  Result, happy man.

Men aren’t supposed to open up.  There I said it.  Don’t suffer in silence, but don’t engage the enemy on their terms either.  Just shut up.  Bottom line, she doesn’t care about your feelings, how your day went, or how you feel when she did something.  What she’s looking for is more fuel to fire her argument.  She needs you to add more logs to the fire.

Try this next time you and your beloved get into an argument.  When you’re at the height of the fight, just shut up.  Don’t shut up and leave (she’ll just follow you anyway)….just shut up.  Don’t say anything.  Go sit on the couch and read a magazine.  Pretend like the argument isn’t happening.  Make a single random statement, like “wow, bologna’s on sale this week.  A bologna sandwich would be good right now.”  Watch her start yelling at the top of her lungs and babbling like she’s possessed.  But maintain your calm and don’t say sh*t. The minute you talk, she’s back on track.

Now you’re in control…because the average woman doesn’t know how to shut the f*ck up.  Silence is like kryptonite to her.  She doesn’t know what to do and will start breaking down and crying about how you don’t communicate with her.  And that’s ok, fellas.  It’s not in your nature.

I was thinking about my father the other day.  I don’t remember having a conversation that lasted longer than 2 minutes with him.  Not because he didn’t love me, but because all that gossiping and associated yappin’ was considered to be for women.  I knew he loved me, but he didn’t have to say it.  Real men were silent.

The happy ones still are.

Feel free to comment.

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This post has 526 words. It will take approximately 5 minutes, 15 secondes for reading it.

A man needs to know when to maintain his calm.  It is important not to jump to conclusion too quickly and keep cool in testy situations…

And there’s a time to act a fool.  Yes I said it.

Some people don’t understand rational behavior and logic.  There are some people you just can’t talk to, and they’re usually at the extreme ends of the spectrum:

• Incredibly stupid – They can’t process what you’re saying and it gets frustrating to talk to them
• Incredibly educated – They think they know everything everything and don’t have to listen (basically, they’re classing you as the former)

In these cases, if walking away isn’t an option, you may have to set social protocol aside and show your ass to make a point.

In a previous post, I told you that my son was in the hospital.  They were able to temporarly help with his pain, but aren’t able to find the source. We’ve been told several things from several different specialists, doctors, and nurses.  Instructions from the daytime covering physician are different from the night time physician.   And in the middle is my son, still in pain.

The doctors came into the room to discuss what type of testing we should do. One doctor would put one plan in motion while another would do some thing entirely different on the next shift.  What one nurse told my ex-wife differed from what they told me.

We tried to talk to the nurses and doctors rationally, asking all the appropriate questions and wanting explainations. What we received was the usual generic phrases followed by an air of “we’re the professionals, keep your simple asses out of the let us handle it.”  And for a while, we did.  I mean, they’re the experts, right?  They are supposed to help us.

Doctors would come in the room in huddles to poke and prod while they guessed at what the cause could be.  It seemed that no one had a clue as to what they were doing.  Finally…I had enough…

“THIS SOME BULLSH*T!  YOU MUTHAF*CKAZ BETTER GET IT RIGHT!  IT’S GONNA BE SOME PROBLEMS IF SH*T DON’T GET STRAIGHT!”

For those who know me, usually I’m a soft-spoken fellow who will try to reason with you.  I really do.  I’m an educated man.  A learned man.  But they didn’t respect that. I tried to be polite and no one wanted to listen.

Now there’s a 2000 pound gorilla in the room wishing a muthaf*cka would come out their mouth sideways.

I followed that with other things that I’d rather not say in polite company but my tirade got things moving.  The chief hospital administrator got involved and started to put things in motion.   It was explained how f*cked up our experience was and that he needed to get his people in gear. After that, he got things moving.

So I had to get “ish” and act like I had no home training.  But sh*t is getting done.

Feel free to comment.

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This post has 683 words. It will take approximately 6 minutes, 49 secondes for reading it.

Picking a good woman is a tough thing to do.  There’s no exact method or way to go about it. It’s as much art as it is science, and no one seems to have gotten it right.

There have been some theories and a few proven testing methods.  I remember a particular scene from “A Bronx Tale” where local mob boss, Sonny, is trying to school his young protegé, “C”, in the fine art of finding a woman.

Sonny: Alright, listen to me. You pull up right where she lives, right? Before you get outta the car, you lock both doors. Then, get outta the car, you walk over to her. You bring her over to the car. Dig out the key, put it in the lock and open the door for her. Then you let her get in. Then you close the door. Then you walk around the back of the car and look through the rear window. If she doesn’t reach over and lift up that button so that you can get in: dump her.

Calogero ‘C’ Anello: Just like that?

Sonny: Listen to me, kid. If she doesn’t reach over and lift up that button so that you can get in, that means she’s a selfish broad and all you’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg. You dump her and you dump her fast.

I’d like to add one to this.  How about if a woman is willing to drive off while you are in the back of a speeding truck and she keeps going?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the sad tale of Cincinnati Bengals’ wide receiver Chris Henry.  He went to his fiancée’s, Loleni Tonga, family’s house and was helping to plan their wedding when something happened that caused Tonga to leave in a hurry.  Henry jumped into the back of her truck as she sped down the street.  At some point Henry either jumped or fell from the back of the truck and died.

She says that she wasn’t driving fast in the 35 MPH zone because he was in the back standing up.  But here’s a thought…how about ya dumb ass stops the truck? How about you get out and see what it was he wanted to talk about?

Any woman who would keep driving when her fiancée is in the back, a man who would take her hand marriage, is a sorry piece of sh*t.  Chris Henry was not trying to remake the movie “Teenwolf” where Michael J. Fox was “car surfing.”  He was not “ghost ridin’ the whip” and asked Tonga to take the wheel (I don’t get the “ghost ridin’” thing, but that’s just me).  He was trying to get her attention. If the neighbor’s account was true, where he heard Henry say that if Tonga didn’t stop the truck that he would jump off and kill himself, she should have stopped the truck.

I don’t know what was said during the argument, but I know that if I’m driving away and someone who loves me and that I claim to love jumps in the back, I’m stopping.  I might be irate and angry but I”m stopping because they are standing in the back of a moving vehicle and they could get hurt.

But I have to put part of this on Chris Henry too. There had to be some signs that she was a sorry ass.  The booty couldn’t have been that good to make him overlook the signs and put a rock on her hand.  There must have been something that he overlooked.  There had to be some signs that this was a psycho b*tch and that she wasn’t wife material.  Henry ignored the signs.

I’m putting my money on the theory that Tonga never leaned over to open the car door.  And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Feel free to comment.

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This post has 696 words. It will take approximately 6 minutes, 57 secondes for reading it.

I’m sorry for not posting the last few days.  I’m in Chicago on business and I haven’t been able to get to Man Among Boys as often as I’d like.

When two people have been in a relationship for a long time, sometimes the love gives way to hurt and pain, and that’s when the relationship ends.  Women become more emotional, and men shield themselves and become colder.   There’s a lot of hate, but eventually, even that gives way to understanding. I have an interesting story to tell.

My son has been sick for the last few days.  He’s been impacted  and has stomach cramping severe enough that he’s gone to the hospital the last two days.  My ex-wife and I have never been able to communicate, but when it comes to anything that has to do with our son, we make due.

I had to fly out to Chicago but I wanted to stop by and see him on my way to the airport to make sure he was alright.  I knocked on the door and my ex-wife greeted me with a warm “hello”.  I replied with my usual “hey” and walked in.

I walked into the living room and made my way to the stairs to go to our son’s room. My ex-wife stopped me short and asked me if I wanted something to drink.

“Is it poisoned?”

“No, it’s not poisoned.”

Hmmm.  So she was just interested in making sure that I wasn’t thirsty.  That was strange.  She was being…nice.

For those of you who know me personally know that our relationship and marriage was very rocky to a point that we hated…I mean HATED…each other.  We have designated places for when we pick up or drop off our son because we don’t feel comfortable alone with each other.  Our son has a cell phone so he can call either of us without having to involve the other.

I’ve laid down to sleep and had dreams of watching her take a bath and throwing an electric space heater in.  For Christmas, I thought about getting on some Kill Bill 2 sh*t and giving her a huge box of money wrapped with a big bow…and when she ripped open her present, have a black mamba with a Santa hat on spring out and bite her on the neck.

But this was different. So I decided to go with it for now.

I said thanks, took the drink and headed up to my son’s room.  I kissed him on the forehead, plopped down on the bed next to him, and we played a few Xbox games until I had to head to the airport.  My ex-wife stayed in the room a little while and watched.  All three of us laughed and joked a while, which was really weird because the conversations my ex-wife and I usually have revolve around the words “f*ck you”, “b*tch”, and “drop dead” .

You could see the joy on my son’s face and he looked back and forth at us.  It almost made him feel better.

For those of you saying “Awwww, that’s so nice. They’re made for each other. They’ll get back together”, uh….NO.  There is no reconciliation.  We’re ex’s for a reason.  Our time has run its course.  Maybe we’re realizing that although we’re not good together, that doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.  I hope she finds someone that is crazy enough to love her.  Two crazy people can stay together forever.

As I got up and made my leave, she wished me a safe trip and told me to call her and my son when I got in to let them know I got there.  Hmm, another act of concern and kindness…gotta be a full moon somewhere.

Or maybe we just turned the corner.  Even after the hurt and pain, we still have a beautiful child to care for.

We’ll see what happens the next time we meet.

Feel free to comment.

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This post has 632 words. It will take approximately 6 minutes, 19 secondes for reading it.

More from my trip in the mountains…

We’d been at the resort for a little while now and got settled in before we decided to eat.  We sat down to dinner, eating, talking, laughing, and enjoying a great time.  As we were sharing a joke, something happened to me that happens to most men…

A fine, correct that, very fine looking lady walked past our table.  A gift and a curse; very nice scenery but if you get caught, you know you will hear about it sooner or later.

So I took a look, not even a look really, more like a peek.  And of course…when my eyes came back to the front, hers were fixed on me…and it wasn’t a happy look.

“I can get her number for you if you want it.”  You can guess how the rest of the night went.

We talked about it, and even debated a little later over a drink.  This was actually a sensitive issue for her.  She said I did that a lot and that she was offended by it (in fact I did it last night).

She said it didn’t have anything to do with insecurity, but she thought it was disrespectful for me to even glance at another woman while in another’s company.

In short, “don’t be lookin’ at no other b*tches when you’re out with me.”

(Note: If I called her or any other woman a b*tch, I would get blessed out because it’s disrespectful and women should be placed on high.  But it’s ok for her to call another woman a b*tch.  I’m not itching to have the word rolling off my tongue, but it’s a tad hypocritical, don’t you think?  However, I digress; that is another topic for another time.)

I am an admitted “girl watcher.”  For all the sh*t I talk, I appreciate the female species, and thank the Lord for every day you are on this earth.  If you can’t appreciate the stunning beauty of Gabrielle Union, Kim Kardashian, or Alicia Keys, well, you’ve got issues.  In fact, for the fellas that missed this pic in my Thanksgiving post, it’s worth putting up a second time.  God is good, all the time..

And since I’m not prejudiced or biased, it wouldn’t be right to just show Alicia, now would it…

Now let’s get back on track…

Appreciating the beauty of another woman doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the company that I’m with, or that I’ll leave you as soon as a bigger ass comes along (I’m more of a breast man anyway).  That just means I appreciate the female species.

Some of the ladies reading may be wondering how I’d feel if an attractive man walked by and you looked.  I think it would be more strange if you didn’t look.  I know there are some handsome men out there; feel free to gawk.  He probably appreciates it, and it’s a nice thing to make someone’s day.  I’m not going to get upset and berate you for looking at someone you found attractive.

If it happens to be a woman you’re looking at, I might invite her over to have a drink with us .

What side of the aisle do you sit on this issue? Are you the type to “handcuff” your man or woman? Do you think a look can lead to more?  Do you think it’s ok to look at another person while you’re in another’s company?  Is it ok to “look at the menu as long as you don’t order?”

Feel free to comment.

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This post has 453 words. It will take approximately 4 minutes, 31 secondes for reading it.

I hope you all had a  Happy Thanksgiving. I hope that you ate lots to turkey, watched a few of the NFL games, and fell into a comatose like sleep.  I also hope that you learned a little something about family.

I think that sometimes we take our family for granted.  I mean they’ve always been around, even when you didn’t want them to be.  We have holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas when we’re supposed to appreciate them a little bit more, but shouldn’t we do that all year long?

I have a friend who spent a non traditional Thanksgiving with her mother this year.  It was just the two of them because, as happens to all of us, the rest of her family was pulled in so many different directions that it’s hard to keep up with everyone.  She and her mother went out to eat dinner…and then went bowling.  She texted me later to let me know that it might have been the best Thanksgiving ever.   She got to spend some one-on-one time with Mom and learned a few personal things about Mom she probably didn’t know before. My friend said that she wouldn’t have gotten to know Mom better over the loud roar of Thanksgiving conversation, family catching up, and NFL Fox Sports news casts.

I learned a lesson of my own.  My family got together for the typical Thanksgiving dinner.  Everyone was eating and enjoying each other’s company….except my teenaged cousin.  She usually sits in the corner, eats dinner, and gets on her laptop.  Everyone is older than her, talking about jobs and their kids growing up and going to school.  She’ll take part in the conversation for a while,  but then goes off to do her own thing.

After I  ate, I went into the living room like I usually do to watch a lopsided football game.  I peered over at my cousin. She just looked up from her computer just long enough to catch my eye, smiled back, and went back into techno-world.  Instead of watching the game, I went to talk to her for a while. We talked about her love of Korean pop music, that she wants to go to college in Japan, and that she eventually wants to help design computer and video games.  She’s a really smart kid and she has a bright future.

Even though get-togethers sometimes seem like a bad scene from “Madea’s Family Reunion” and they get on my nerves, they are my family.  You don’t have to love your family, but I do.

Did you learn anything new about your family?  Feel free to comment.

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