Category: Men

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Ughhh! I hate Doctors Appointments

I just remembered I have a Dr Appointment today. I hate doctors appointments, I always feel so… violated.

Well I’ve already had coffee with sugar so there goes the cholesterol screening.

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Oooopps! Oh well.

Been thinking about a lot of things where the Doc is concerned.

I like him a lot but he’s too busy. He’s also recently (within the past year) gotten some new help and frankly they’re snotty little bitches.

Again we go back to the basic question of “Who is the Customer and Who is the service provider?” 

It’s funny how often issues boil down to that simple question.

From Politicians to Physicians, Lawyers to Mechanics, Educators to Customer Service people, it’s always the same. If they forget that you’re the one paying the bill it’s time to remind them.

You can do that by finding someone else or by working your way up the chain of command. All too often we forget that simple truth.

I’ve been contacted more by the satellite company recently than in the previous 10 years I was their customer. All because I told them exactly why I was pulling the plug. I guess $1400 a year gone from a customer that was no trouble and who paid their bill on time due to crappy customer service got their attention.

I know my place. Apparently these new people at my Doctors office don’t know theirs.

I’m asking myself do I want to expend the energy to train them? Or do I want to expend that energy to find a new physician?

In a typical year I see a Doctor only once or twice.

Like most men, It’s gotta be arterial bleeding before I even think about going to a Doc.

Because of that when I fucking call with a problem I don’t want some smart mouth little bitch giving me more attitude than that Snookie woman from Jersey, or one of the Kardashian sluts.

I want straight answers and if I leave a message for the Doc to call me back… He damn well better get the message. 

I’ve been nice and polite and gotten nowhere.

I had hives from something he told me to take last year. I had no idea Hives could be dangerous. I thought they were simply an annoyance. Didn’t matter, I never got a call back from the Doctor. It was the pharmacist at my local Rite Aid who clued me in and helped me out.

I think the Doctor and I are going to have a little discussion about my expectations.

If he can meet those expectations great! if not… I’m going to be looking for a new Doc.

I’ve approached this health thing as a partnership if I’ve become another piece of meat well then we have a major problem.

On the plus side… I’m going to go drinking with some buddies I haven’t seen in a long time. That should be fun.

Maybe then I won’t feel quite so violated…

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Cudos to SendGrid for doing the right thing… Or When Stupid is a crime

Or I could have called this… When Twitter is a weapon.

On Sunday 3/17/2013 a lady attending PyCon in Santa Clara overheard a couple of developers engaging in some sophomoric joking where they were trading sexual innuendos about poorly named devices.

Instead of doing the simple thing like turning around and letting these guys know they were out of line she photographed & tweeted their picture out into the twitterverse.

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Her action caused the two developers to be removed from the convention, one of the guys lost his job and ultimately so did she. This Article is pretty brutal about how they report it.

There is so much that is wrong in this scenario.

This woman had options:

She could have done the human thing and asked the guys to cool it, explaining that they were being offensive.

She could have moved, thereby taking responsibility for her own feelings. (I’m not saying that she should have been required to move, but she could have removed herself from the annoyance.)

She chose to be passive aggressive, snap a photo of the guys (without their knowledge / consent or modeling release) then broadcast that photo to a presumably wide public audience captioned with something identifying them as pigs. Saying essentially HELP ME THEY’RE SEXUALLY HARASSING ME! 

We’ve all sat through sexual harassment training. As I’ve sat through those classes I’ve often thought that the Harassment brush was just a little too broad and biased against men. Women have far greater latitude in what they can say to men and we men have to take it.

I’ve been asked in the workplace if I was circumcised, and how big my dick was by crude Women. I’ve also listened to endless gay jokes and disparaging remarks, from men.

Hell, I’ve been present in rooms where the evil of the WHITE man was being discussed and the suggested solution was that all the white people should be punished. Yeah racism isn’t solely the domain of white people. Racists come in all colors shapes and sizes.

So WHAT?

Next! I simply exited the area when the conversation turned to stuff I didn’t want or need to hear.

I’ve watched woman after woman end good mens careers with the corporate Nuclear weapon of “Harassment” it’s not a new phenomena. I’ve also seen men laughed out of an HR department when they decided to report a woman that was harassing them.

I remember laughing my ass off several years ago when after considerable publicity a female sports reporter was allowed in the locker rooms of male professional teams.

She was then offended by naked men walking around in the locker room. I thought it was a joke, but quickly it escalated into something more. After gaining access to the male locker rooms, she decided that the men should be clothed when she was there. The insanity came to a halt when the teams simply stopped talking to her.

I remember thinking, “Lady that’s why we built locker rooms. Guys would be just as happy changing clothes and showering outside. We created the space so that women and children wouldn’t be offended.”

At the time a number of male sports reported speculated about gaining access to female locker rooms but that was considered creepy.

This situation is also about our collective thin skin, and our psychotic enforcement of  Politically Correct standards on steroids.

You can reasonably expect to be offended by something anytime you’re out in public.

For that matter you can expect to be offended by the crap that passes for entertainment on TV, not to mention the commercials. KIAs booming hip hop commercials come to mind. The Kardashians, uhh hello???

It’s the kid with his pants hanging down his butt.

Or the morbidly obese guy sweating like Niagara Falls in front of you at a fast food joint ordering 2 mega cheese burgers super size fries and a gallon cup of diet coke.

It’s the plumber proudly showing off a hairy plumbers crack.

The gang member flashing signs at an opposing gang in front of a crowd of kids, daring someone in the opposing gang to shoot him, thoughtless of the collateral damage.

It’s the past middle aged woman whose been around the block once too often, braless dressed like a teenage slut.

And it’s the teenager dressed like a slut being upset because people treat her badly.

It’s the Middle Eastern guy screaming and shaking his fist at a veiled woman in a mall, as she shrinks away.

It’s the profane, the obscene, the morally ambiguous.

It’s the self centered dumbasses more interested in texting while they’re driving or walking expecting you to move out of their way because they can’t be bothered to pay attention to someone as lowly as you.

It’s signs with messages you find offensive. Do I need to see salacious advertising for the latest “Falling Star” from Hollywood?

How about booming music with lyrics talking about killing whitie or slappin dat ho ’cause she don’t suck you right.

It’s the gas pump TVs screaming at you while you’re just trying to put gas in your car. while you’re thinking, “why am I paying 4.80 a gallon to be forced to hear this shit?”

In short it’s all the things that we each find offensive, yet put up with and ignore.

These things we take no action about because after all it’s about freedom of expression. Well, freedom… and the undercurrent of fear of getting involved. 

But two men, having a laugh at bawdy innuendo at a convention in public who happen to be in earshot of a woman… and the shit hits the fan.

I think that SendGrid did the right thing firing this woman, I also think they should apologize to the developers who were removed from the conference and they should pay the developers companies for the lost conference fees.

Moreover, I think this should serve as a call to arms.

The time for draconian Politically Correct enforcement is past. it’s time for some of us to grow thicker skins, and stop trying to see offense in every situation.

It’s also time to stop denigrating being Male.

Face it men are different. Aside from our cocks and balls. We think differently and look at the world differently. As a result our jokes and what we find funny will be reflective of those differences. 

It’s time to let men be men.

Ladies, believe it or not, if you simply ask us to play nice… We will.

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Bad habits

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I used to smoke. 

Yeah, I was a smoker. I was the evil puffing bastard everyone has come to hate! I put your children at risk! According to the nanny state I should have been taken out and shot.

Not to put me out of my misery but out of yours.

I quit years ago and I still miss it.

Now theres an un-PC admission in this day & age!

I’m glad I quit and everything, but I liked the nicotine rush! I also liked that it killed my appetite and it was a lot easier to stay skinny.

The health benefits outweighed the desire to smoke and so I was able to leave it, albeit with regret in my past.

I quit because my best friend asked me one day how it was that I could justify going to the gym 4 days a week and still smoke when I came out of the gym?

It was a good question and as usual his logic was completely irrefutable.

I quit that day…

I still miss it.

I miss smoking when I’m drinking at a bar. You can’t smoke at bars in California anymore but I still miss it.

I miss smoking after sex. I miss the ashtray on my belly, the red cherry of my cigarette glowing in the darkness and me thinking quietly about what I’d just done and knowing that I was going to do it again when I stubbed out my smoke. I miss having my arm wrapped around my partner, their head on my shoulder while I smoked that in between fuck cigarette.

I doubt I’m the only man who feels that way.

I miss getting up from my desk and walking outside to have a smoke and bitch with my co-workers about the boss or the latest political fuck-up in the company.

I smoked because I enjoyed the taste, and the hit. Not because I was lured into it by unscrupulous corporations. (Their ads were enticing, who didn’t want to be the Marlboro Man?)  I knew damn well what I was doing.

My Dad smoked. It killed him, you’d think that I wouldn’t wax lovingly about cigarettes.

I didn’t start smoking until I was 18. Near the end of my smoking days, I was doing almost a pack a day.

The nicotine was one thing. I think I was self medicating a bit. Nicotine acts as a stimulant and because it’s a stimulant it has a very specific effect on persons who happen to have been treated in their childhood with drugs like Ritalin.

The child may have outgrown the reasons they were put on Ritalin but their bodies will always have an affinity for stimulants in general.

I’ve known more than one smoker who had been on Ritalin in their childhood, of those more than a few who really liked pharmaceutical grade stimulants. 

Interesting thing is that if their Doctor was smart and recognized certain traits they’d end up back on Ritalin and suddenly they’d stop smoking.

But sure… Ritalin is completely safe for your unruly child, we’ve been using it for 50 years on kids just like yours… (with no or generally undocumented, unproven ill effects.)

Moving on…

I recently had the opportunity to try one of those e-cigarettes. For those of you that don’t know, these are things that look like cigarettes and that provide a nice flavor and optionally a selectable hit of nicotine without the tar, and other nasty chemicals associated with combustion in a “real” cigarette.

It was nice…

Not exactly like smoking a cigarette, but it was pleasant.

Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading and investigation The jury is out about the negative effects of these devices.

About the only consistent thing is that they’re less unhealthy than a cigarette. The “Smoke” is essentially water vapor, there’s no smell, but there is a good taste (at least in the one I tried). You can choose the nicotine leveNewImagel and they’re also a lot cheaper than cigarettes. 

I’m not sure that I’m ready to start up with one of these things all the time but I do like the option.

The only problem I could see is that unlike a real cigarette you don’t know when you’re done. 

I’d smoke a real cigarette in about 10 -15 minutes if I wasn’t in a hurry. These e-cigs don’t burn down so you could find yourself completely losing track of time if you weren’t paying attention.

For someone like me that really enjoyed smoking even when I quit… these things might be a neat option. I could also see how they might assist in quitting for some people.

But I suspect that there will be a larger number of folks who switch over to this option. At least until the government starts to regulate them and drives the prices up to normal cigarette levels.

There’s also the fact that cigarettes used to be, and e-cigs still are cheaper than a monthly prescription of Ritalin.

I don’t know if that’s still the case. I haven’t looked into Ritalin in a very long time.