marketing of masculinity

44. Treat a burn

important ilx skill

genuine in-office roffles! I go to a meeting and shit turns hilarious.

Going wayyy upthread... I watched the whole series of "how to tie a tie", and not one of those knots is quite exactly the one that I tie. I keep watching the four-in-hand and half-windsor videos, but neither seem exactly like my (apparently special) knot. But neither are the results very different. I want my knot to have a NAME, damnit!

how does yr knot go

I... I can't describe it all with words and stuff. I suppose I could make a video.

But I'm not sure either myself or anyone else really cares that much.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't.

Ok, forget I mentioned it. :)

haah ok

Make a video and we can call it a "full kenan."

kenan maybe it is a pratt aka shelby knot? iirc there are like 85 ways to knot a tie (topologically) but there are only 5 or so that are named

double kenan

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~ym101/tie4/tie4.html

^ nerd alert

holy shit, that link is like catnip to me (and I don't wear ties that often)

Ah ha. Yeah, seems like a shelby, though I don't start the way they do in this video, with the shit all backwards and shit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ4Rb_mYKS0

That would be a good bit of masculine marketing if only those were a woman's hands.

And if it were The Edge instead of a mannequin.

heh... I got that.

in defense of that popular science list (not the way it's written or every item on it), my stepdad was a popular science kinda dude. he knew his way around every imaginable tool and scientific discipline, in a knowledgeable layman's "here are the basics" sort of way. he knew all about surviving arcane emergencies and how to tie hundreds of different knots, could repair cars and household appliances and plumbing and electrical systems. had a head full of mathematical formulae and conversion tables and useful phrases in foreign languages. was not a cook, but had memorized a few favorite recipes he could execute expertly. knew the name of every plant, animal, constellation and cloud formation.

he just liked to know his way around stuff. it was definitely an ego thing for him, but one with tangible benefits. he was great to go camping or fishing with, a godsend in real emergencies of any kind, and i learned a hell of a lot from him. always kinda regretted not being more like him in that sense, but i'm not. therefore, i'm kinda cool with a lot of the stuff on that PS list and with its general intent, though yeah it's written very badly.

holy shit i forgot about fucking speed buggy until just now

― jazzgasms (Mr. Que), Thursday, December 10, 2009 11:40 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that seems like an experience one would remember forever

― wtf?!? just randomly started crying! (HI DERE), Thursday, December 10, 2009 11:42 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

especially if you're this guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTiVO8kbEvc

Should we expand this to images of masculinity in pop tunes? Like, say, your top 40/young country hits about "bein' a man"? As contrasted with James Brown or Jarvis?

I think Jarvis is a little more in a grey area than James Brown or [insert male country artist here]. Jarvis is kind of the embodiment of "My dick is where? This is too rich."

^ i don't know what this means, but it's my new display name.

the dick in in a tub of creme fraîche? how is that good?

i think table is the table has already taken that one tbh xp

LOL - the Shelby is named after an incredibly cool Twin Cities anchordude.

Re: BBQ and how to eat it, from Joseph Mitchell:

It didn't take women long to corrupt the beefsteak. They forced the addition of such things as Manhattan cocktails, fruit cups, and fancy salads to the traditional menu of slices of ripened steaks, double lamb chops, kidneys, and beer by the pitcher. They insisted on dance orchestras instead of brassy German bands. The life of the party at a beefsteak used to be the man who let out the most ecstatic grunts, drank the most beer, ate the most steak, and got the most grease on his ears, but women do not esteem a glutton, and at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer. Until around 1920, beefsteak etiquette was rigid. Knives, forks, napkins, and tablecloths never had been permitted; a man was supposed to eat with his hands.

When beefsteaks became bisexual, the etiquette changed. For generations men had worn their second-best suits because of the inevitability of grease spots; tuxedos and women appeared simultaneously. Most beefsteaks degenerated into polite banquets at which open-face sandwiches of grilled steak happened to be the principal dish. However, despite the frills introduced by women, two schools of traditional steak-dinner devotees still flourish. They may conveniently be called the East Side and West Side schools. They disagree over matters of menu and etiquette, and both claim that their beefsteaks are the more classical or old-fashioned.

bisexual beefsteaks, huh

I suppose this wasn't enough to set off your satire-ometer:

at a contemporary beefsteak it is unusual for a man to do away with more than six pounds of meat and thirty glasses of beer.

tbh when the dicks get to swingin' it's hard to distinguish satire from self-parody sometimes

I don't think the entire thing is full-on satire but it certainly doesn't seem like something that wants to be taken seriously; it looks like it's dressing up commentary re: East Side and West Side steak cooking methods in "rawr we were real men then" humor.

Well, it was written in 1939 about the beefsteaks of the 1920s (taken from this page on beefsteaks, but also from Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. I don't think of it as satire, as much as reporting on the guys who missed the old beefsteaks of yore.

haha okay, that does put something of a different context on it

"remember the days before beefsteak went ac/dc?"

old beefsteaks of yore = beef jerky

"remember the days before all the women made us stop eating pemmican?"

there's a logic going on in that paragraph that basically means that sex with a woman is kind of... gay.

You mean eating with a woman.

He certainly does.

i read that excerpt as satirical. it satirizes both the crudity of manly men in days gone by, and also (in its tone) the nostalgia for a retrospectively exaggerated version of such. quote similar to the contemporary ads mentioned in this thread.

"quite similar..."

most cars come with instruction manuals that tell you how to change the tire

― wtf?!? just randomly started crying! (HI DERE), Thursday, December 10, 2009 12:41 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i cannot keep up with this thread, but ^^^^^

i am picking tire-changing arbitrarily but not knowing how to do this is on some next-level "I just don't GET math" art of pretend helplessness shit. put the jack under the car, jack it, use the iron to loosen the nuts, pull the wheel off, put the spare on, tighten the nuts, lower the car. this is a skill that should be filed under ADULT CAR USER, not MAN. if you don't drive, or have never gotten a flat, fine. or if you have and the weather was shitty or something. but if you've gotten a flat tire, and had the requisite kit with you, and the weather was nice, and the nuts came off easily (sometimes they don't and that sucks), and you STILL called a tow truck, then you are just a lazy person. the end.

anyway, like elmo said way upthread, most of the skills i'm interested in acquiring these days are horrifyingly feminine, and i always, always wear an apron while cooking.

I've changed more than my fair share of flats in my life, but I can 100% see how people could be intimidated by the process and just not want to bother. Sometimes the instructions are incredibly vague about where to properly place the jack and I can see someone not wanting to take the chance to try to jack it incorrectly and fuck something up or worse!

fukken dr. homo over here

I've changed more than my fair share of flats in my life, but I can 100% see how people could be intimidated by the process and just not want to bother. Sometimes the instructions are incredibly vague about where to properly place the jack and I can see someone not wanting to take the chance to try to jack it incorrectly and fuck something up or worse!

― & other try hard shitfests (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Friday, December 11, 2009 5:38 PM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i don't buy this, tbh. figure it out. if you can write a paper with yr eyes closed or w/e, then you can stare at some instructions and think rationally about how to do something in the actual, physical world. jacking something incorrectly can't really fuck things up THAT much. if it's a weenie jack that comes with the car, then the worst that'll happen is that the car will suddenly drop a few inches when the jack tips over. oh noes.

and hey lamp y dont U go somewhere and stfu

XXpost. You loosen the nuts before you jack it up by the way. Otherwise it might fall off the jack. Ditto for tightening.

Yeah, but remember that someone stranded on the side of a busy expressway with a flat tire while running late for something important is certainly not in the most appropriate frame of mind for clear thinking. I mean, I agree with you in that it is an important (and relatively easy) skill to learn, but at the same time I can completely see why people are intimidated by it!

i have made that mistake before!

xp

Yeah, but remember that someone stranded on the side of a busy expressway with a flat tire while running late for something important is certainly not in the most appropriate frame of mind for clear thinking. I mean, I agree with you in that it is an important (and relatively easy) skill to learn, but at the same time I can completely see why people are intimidated by it!

YEEESS, this is why you should maybe KNOW HOW before it happens to you! As I/we were saying. That's why it's good to know how to do things just because, sometimes.

yeah, i guess, and i am being an internet hardman about something pretty trivial, but still. sometimes this attitude ("willed helplessness" we'll say) pushes my dang buttons. i am in no way in favor of heavily gendered skillsets or w/e, but ffs ppl pounding a nail or painting your walls or installing a driver is NOT DIFFICULT. or, rather, learning how to do that thing is not difficult.

xp