Males Life Best Quotes

The female form lends itself best to represent matter because both create life within themselves. The male form lends itself best to represent soul because both create life outside themselves.

Have you ever heard of penguin love stones?” “What?” “A penguin love stone. When a male likes a female, he finds a perfect stone and he brings it to her. If she likes it, she puts it in her nest and that’s it. They’re paired for life.” Brian watched Liz taking an order at another table but talked to us. “And your point?” “My point is, the penguin’s not picking her mate because he’s the one who has the best rock. It might look that way, but she’s not. She’s taking the rock because the male she wants the most is offering it. Sometimes what you have to give is enough. Even if it’s a rock instead of a diamond.

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

In his essay,Agastya had said that his real ambition was to be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best life.They were assured of food,and because they were stray they didn't have to guard a house or beg or shake paws or fetch trifles or be clean or anything similarly meaningless to earn their food.They were servile and sycophantic when hungry;once fed,and before sleep,they wagged their tails perfunctorily whenever their hosts passes,as an investment for future meals.A stray dog was free,he slept a lot,barked unexpectedly and only when he wanted to,and got a lot of sex.

Best (male-female) friends hardly differ from lovers, but not too many lovers are best friends. It's just ironical that you are in love and want to spend the rest of your life with someone who is not good enough to be your best friend.

We drive down the road in complete silence for a few miles listening to 50 Cent. As soon as he tells us that he's into having sex, he ain't into making love, Casey turns the volume down and begins telling me the following information: " I love you so much. We're going to have the best life together. I can't wait." Every word she says makes me feel a little more like faking a stroke and pretending to lose all memory of who I was, but it's not until she looks me in the eye and says in all seriousness, "You're my soul mate," that I realize I am not going to marry her.

Your very best look, my queen, is the one you were born with. As far as I’m concerned, perfection can’t be improved upon by either man nor God.” Leaning in, he kissed her softly. “Just thought you’d want to know what your male’s been thinking as I’ve been staring at you.” Selena started to smile, especially as she realized that sometimes “I love you” could be said without those particular three words lined up in a row. “See?” she said softly. “I told you this was going to be the best night of my life.

I must say, though, that a man who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman's love and who, when that card is trumped, falls to pieces and lets himself go to the dogs -- a fellow like that is not a man, not a male. You say he's unhappy -- you know best. But all the nonsense hasn't been taken out of him yet. I'm sure he really believes he's a smart fellow just because he reads that rag Galignani and saves a muzhik from a flogging once a month.

So often, we're told that women's stories are unimportant. After all, what does it matter what happens in the main room, in the kitchen, or in the bedroom? Who cares about the relationships between mother, daughter, and sister? A baby's illness, the sorrows and pains of childbirth, keeping the family together during war, poverty, or even in the best of days are considered small and insignificant compared with the stories of men, who fight against nature to grow their crops, who wage battles to secure their homelands, who struggle to look inward in search of the perfect man. We're told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men. The men in my life—my father, Z.G., my husband, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my son—faced, to one degree or another, those great male battles, but their hearts—so fragile—wilted, buckled, crippled, corrupted, broke, or shattered when confronted with the losses women face every day...Our men try to act strong, but it is May, Yen-yen, Joy, and I who must steady them and help them bear their pain, anguish, and shame.

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

What do you know about somebody not being good enough for somebody else? And since when did you care whether Corinthians stood up or fell down? You've been laughing at us all your life. Corinthians. Mama. Me. Using us, ordering us, and judging us: how we cook your food; how we keep your house. But now, all of a sudden, you have Corinthians' welfare at heart and break her up from a man you don't approve of. Who are you to approve or disapprove anybody or anything? I was breathing air in the world thirteen years before your lungs were even formed. Corinthians, twelve. . . . but now you know what's best for the very woman who wiped the dribble from your chin because you were too young to know how to spit. Our girlhood was spent like a found nickel on you. When you slept, we were quiet; when you were hungry, we cooked; when you wanted to play, we entertained you; and when you got grown enough to know the difference between a woman and a two-toned Ford, everything in this house stopped for you. You have yet to . . . move a fleck of your dirt from one place to another. And to this day, you have never asked one of us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee. . . . Where do you get the RIGHT to decide our lives? . . . I'll tell you where. From that hog's gut that hangs down between your legs. . . . I didn't go to college because of him. Because I was afraid of what he might do to Mama. You think because you hit him once that we all believe you were protecting her. Taking her side. It's a lie. You were taking over, letting us know you had the right to tell her and all of us what to do. . . . I don't make roses anymore, and you have pissed your last in this house.

No matter how many indigested actions a female appears to exhibit to the male psyche, she is still a woman. She's the specialty of the house. However she doesn't come at a sale price. Considering her value, a woman is one of the best deals life has to offer.

They had started speaking of “women and children”—that phrase that exempts the male from sanity when it has been repeated a few times. Each felt that all he loved best in the world was at stake, demanded revenge, and was filled with a not unpleasing glow, in which the chilly and half-known features of Miss Quested vanished, and were replaced by all that is sweetest and warmest in private life. “But it’s the women and children,” they repeated, and the Collector knew he ought to stop them intoxicating themselves, but he hadn’t the heart.

Dear Young Black Males, I dare you to be different. I dare you to think for yourself and not be easily influenced by others. I dare you to be a leader and not a follower. I dare you to disassociate yourself from things and people that you know don’t mean you any good or have your best interest at heart. I dare you to change your bad attitude. I dare you to tame that temper of yours. I dare you to talk about what’s bothering you instead of displaying disrupted behavior. I dare you to go to school, learn all that you can, and apply yourself. I dare you to look outside of your circumstances and see yourself as a successful person. I dare you to ask questions, ask for help when you need it, and not be afraid to work hard for what you want. I dare you to live your life without excuses and find a positive way to get to where you’d like to be in life. I dare you! Don’t take the easy way out. Challenge yourself and achieve greatness! You can do it!

The second most frequently asked question is, “What can we learn of moral value from the ants?” Here again I will answer definitively. Nothing. Nothing at all can be learned from ants that our species should even consider imitating. For one thing, all working ants are female. Males are bred and appear in the nest only once a year, and then only briefly. They are unappealing, pitiful creatures with wings, huge eyes, small brain, and genitalia that make up a large portion of their rear body segment. They do no work while in the nest and have only one function in life: to inseminate the virgin queens during the nuptial season when all fly out to mate. They are built for their one superorganismic role only: robot flying sexual missiles. Upon mating or doing their best to mate (it is often a big fight for a male just to get to a virgin queen), they are not admitted back home, but instead are programmed to die within hours, usually as victims of predators. Now for the moral lesson: although like almost all well-educated Americans I am a devoted promoter of gender equality, I consider sex practiced the ant way a bit extreme.

It’s part of a woman’s hypergamous nature to always seek the best male that she could get.

female superhero, Marston insisted, was the best answer to the critics, since “the comics’ worst offense was their bloodcurdling masculinity.” He explained, A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child’s ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing—love. It’s smart to be strong. It’s big to be generous. But it’s sissified, according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving, affectionate, and alluring. “Aw, that’s girl’s stuff!” snorts our young comics reader. “Who wants to be a girl?” And that’s the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, power. Not wanting to be girls they don’t want to be tender, submissive, peaceloving as good women are. Women’s strong qualities have become despised because of their weak ones. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.14

You who come of a younger and happier generation may not have heard of her—you may not know what I mean by The Angel in the House. [...] She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. [...] She was pure. [...] She slipped behind me and whispered: 'My dear, you are a young woman. [...] Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure. [...] I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. [...] Indeed it will be a long time still, I think, before a woman can sit down...without finding a phantom to be slain, a rock to be dashed against.

Even though the woman was not human—the land—or was less than human—a cow—farming had the symbolic overtones of old-fashioned agrarian romance: plowing the land was loving it, feeding the cow was tending it. In the farming model, the woman was owned privately; she was the homestead, not a public thoroughfare. One farmer worked her. The land was valued because it produced a valuable crop; and in keeping with the mystique of the model itself, sometimes the land was real pretty, special, richly endowed; a man could love it. The cow was valued because of what she produced: calves, milk; sometimes she took a prize. There was nothing actually idyllic in this. As many as one quarter of all acts of battery may be against pregnant women; and women die from pregnancy even without the intervention of a male fist. But farming implied a relationship of some substance between the farmer and what was his: and it is grander being the earth, being nature, even being a cow, than being a cunt with no redeeming mythology. Motherhood ensconced a woman in the continuing life of a man: how he used her was going to have consequences for him. Since she was his, her state of being reflected on him; and therefore he had a social and psychological stake in her welfare as well as an economic one. Because the man farmed the woman over a period of years, they developed a personal relationship, at least from her point of view: one limited by his notions of her sex and her kind; one strained because she could never rise to the human if it meant abandoning the female; but it was her best chance to be known, to be regarded with some tenderness or compassion meant for her, one particular woman.

Women (...) have been encouraged since they were children to be dependent to an unhealthy degree. Any woman who looks within knows that she was never trained to be comfortable with the idea of taking care of herself, standing up for herself, asserting herself. At best she may have played the game of independence, inwardly envying the boys (and later the men) because they seemed so naturally self-sufficient. It is not nature that bestows this self-sufficiency on men; it's training. Males are educated for independence from the day they are born. Just as systematically, women are taught that they have an out - that someday, in some way, they are going to be saved. That is the fairy tale, the life-message (...) We may venture out on our own for a while. We may go away to school, work, travel; we may even make good money, but underneath it all there is a finite quality to our feelings about independence. Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living. (The only savior the boy learns about is himself.)

The cultural Left has contributed to the formation of this politically useless unconscious not only by adopting “power” as the name of an invisible, ubiquitous, and malevolent presence, but by adopting ideals which nobody is yet able to imagine being actualized. Among these ideals are participatory democracy and the end of capitalism. Power will pass to the people, the Sixties Left believed only when decisions are made by all those who may be affected by the results. This means, for example, that economic decisions will be made by stakeholders rather than by shareholders, and that entrepreneurship and markets will cease to play their present role. When they do, capitalism as we know it will have ended, and something new will have taken its place. […] Sixties leftists skipped lightly over all the questions which had been raised by the experience of non market economies in the so-called socialist countries. They seemed to be suggesting that once we were rid of both bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, “the people” would know how to handle competition from steel mills or textile factories in the developing world, price hikes on imported oil, and so on. But they never told us how “the people” would learn how to do this. The cultural Left still skips over such questions. Doing so is a consequence of its preference for talking about “the system” rather than about specific social practices and specific changes in those practices. The rhetoric of this Left remains revolutionary rather than reformist and pragmatic. Its insouciant use of terms like “late capitalism” suggests that we can just wait for capitalism to collapse, rather than figuring out what, in the absence of markets, will set prices and regulate distribution. The voting public, the public which must be won over if the Left is to emerge from the academy into the public square, sensibly wants to be told the details. It wants to know how things are going to work after markets are put behind us. It wants to know how participatory democracy is supposed to function. The cultural Left offers no answers to such demands for further information, but until it confronts them it will not be able to be a political Left. The public, sensibly, has no interest in getting rid of capitalism until it is offered details about the alternatives. Nor should it be interested in participatory democracy –– the liberation of the people from the power of technocrats –– until it is told how deliberative assemblies will acquire the same know-how which only the technocrats presently possess. […] The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which the white patriarchs have stopped voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups, people who have somehow come into possession of more foresight and imagination than the selfish suburbanites. These formerly oppressed and newly powerful people are expected to be as angelic as the straight white males were diabolical. If I shared this expectation, I too would want to live under this new dispensation. Since I see no reason to share it, I think that the left should get back into the business of piecemeal reform within the framework of a market economy. This was the business the American Left was in during the first two-thirds of the century. Someday, perhaps, cumulative piecemeal reforms will be found to have brought about revolutionary change. Such reforms might someday produce a presently unimaginable non market economy, and much more widely distributed powers of decision making. […] But in the meantime, we should not let the abstractly described best be the enemy of the better. We should not let speculation about a totally changed system, and a totally different way of thinking about human life and affairs, replace step-by-step reform of the system we presently have.

It seemed to me, from a psychological angle, that the comics' worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity. A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child's ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary powers to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing - love.

Welcome back, little one. And if you worry us like that again, I will lock you up myself for the next fifty years.” “Get in line,” Nikolas muttered. Great, all I needed was another male in my life who thought he knew what was best for me. I didn’t know whether to scowl at the pair of them or be amazed that they were in agreement on something. Unfortunately, with my penchant for attracting trouble, I’d probably see how serious their threats were sooner rather than later.

Apart from such chaotic classics as these, my own taste in novel reading is one which I am prepared in a rather especial manner, not only to declare, but to defend. My taste is for the sensational novel, the detective story, the story about death, robbery and secret societies; a taste which I share in common with the bulk at least of the male population of this world. There was a time in my own melodramatic boyhood when I became quite fastidious in this respect. I would look at the first chapter of any new novel as a final test of its merits. If there was a murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I read the story. If there was no murdered man under the sofa in the first chapter, I dismissed the story as tea-table twaddle, which it often really was. But we all lose a little of that fine edge of austerity and idealism which sharpened our spiritual standard in our youth. I have come to compromise with the tea-table and to be less insistent about the sofa. As long as a corpse or two turns up in the second, the third, nay even the fourth or fifth chapter, I make allowance for human weakness, and I ask no more. But a novel without any death in it is still to me a novel without any life in it. I admit that the very best of the tea-table novels are great art - for instance, Emma or Northanger Abbey. Sheer elemental genius can make a work of art out of anything. Michelangelo might make a statue out of mud, and Jane Austen could make a novel out of tea - that much more contemptible substance. But on the whole I think that a tale about one man killing another man is more likely to have something in it than a tale in which, all the characters are talking trivialities without any of that instant and silent presence of death which is one of the strong spiritual bonds of all mankind. I still prefer the novel in which one person does another person to death to the novel in which all the persons are feebly (and vainly) trying to get the others to come to life.

While women suffer from our relative lack of power in the world and often resent it, certain dimensions of this powerlessness may seem abstract and remote. We know, for example, that we rarely get to make the laws or direct the major financial institutions. But Wall Street and the U.S. Congress seem very far away. The power a woman feels in herself to heal and sustain, on the other hand--"the power of love"--is, once again, concrete and very near: It is like a field of force emanating from within herself, a great river flowing outward from her very person. Thus, a complex and contradictory female subjectivity is constructed within the relations of caregiving. Here, as elsewhere, women are affirmed in some way and diminished in others, this within the unity of a single act. The woman who provides a man with largely unreciprocated emotional sustenance accords him status and pays him homage; she agrees to the unspoken proposition that his doings are important enough to deserve substantially more attention than her own. But even as the man's supremacy in the relationship is tacitly assumed by both parties to the transaction, the man reveals himself to his caregiver as vulnerable and insecure. And while she may well be ethically and epistemically disempowered by the care she gives, this caregiving affords her a feeling that a mighty power resides within her being. The situation of those men in the hierarchy of gender who avail themselves of female tenderness is not thereby altered: Their superordinate position is neither abandoned, nor their male privilege relinquished. The vulnerability these men exhibit is not a prelude in any way to their loss of male privilege or to an elevation in the status of women. Similarly, the feeling that one's love is a mighty force for the good in the life of the beloved doesn't make it so, as Milena Jesenka found, to her sorrow. The feeling of out-flowing personal power so characteristic of the caregiving woman is quite different from the having of any actual power in the world. There is no doubt that this sense of personal efficacy provides some compensation for the extra-domestic power women are typically denied: If one cannot be a king oneself, being a confidante of kings may be the next best thing. But just as we make a bad bargain in accepting an occasional Valentine in lieu of the sustained attention we deserve, we are ill advised to settle for a mere feeling of power, however heady and intoxicating it may be, in place of the effective power we have every right to exercise in the world.

The three thousand miles in distance he put between himself and Emma tonight is nothing compared with the enormous chasm separating them when they sit next to each other in calculus. Emma's ability to overlook his existence is a gift-but not one that Poseidon handed down. Rachel insists this gift is uniquely a female trait, regardless of the species. Since their breakup, Emma seems to be the only female utilizing this particular gift. Even Rayna could learn a few lessons from Emma in the art of torturing a smitten male. Smitten? More like fanatical. He shakes his head in disgust. Why couldn't I just sift when I turned of age? Why couldn't I find a suitable mild-tempered female to mate with? Live a peaceful life, produce offspring, grow old, and watch my own fingerlings have fingerlings someday? He searches through his mind for someone he might have missed in the past. For a face he overlooked before but could now look forward to every day. For a docile female who would be honored to mate with a Triton prince-instead of a temperamental siren who mocks his title at every opportunity. He scours his memory for a sweet-natured Syrena who would take care of him, who would do whatever he asked, who would never argue with him. Not some human-raised snippet who stomps her foot when she doesn't get her way, listens to him only when it suits some secret purpose she has, or shoves a handful of chocolate mints down his throat if he lets his guard down. Not some white-haired angelfish whose eyes melt him into a puddle, whose blush is more beautiful than sunrise, and whose lips send heat ripping through him like a mine explosion. He sighs as Emma's face eclipses hundreds of mate-worthy Syrena. That's just one more quality I'll have to add to the list: someone who won't mind being second best. His just locks as he catches a glimpse of his shadow beneath him, cast by slithers of sterling moonlight. Since it's close to three a.m. here, he's comfortable walking around without the inconvenience of clothes, but sitting on the rocky shore in the raw is less than appealing. And it doesn't matter which Jersey shore he sits on, he can't escape the moon that connects them both-and reminds him of Emma's hair. Hovering in the shallows, he stares up at it in resentment, knowing the moon reminds him of something else he can' escape-his conscience. If only he could shirk his responsibilities, his loyalty to his family, his loyalty to his people. If only he could change everything about himself, he could steal Emma away and never look back-that is, if she'll ever talk to him again.

In agricultural communities, male leadership in the hunt ceased to be of much importance. As the discipline of the hunting band decayed, the political institutions of the earliest village settlements perhaps approximated the anarchism which has remained ever since the ideal of peaceful peasantries all round the earth. Probably religious functionaries, mediators between helpless mankind and the uncertain fertility of the earth, provided an important form of social leadership. The strong hunter and man of prowess, his occupation gone or relegated to the margins of social life, lost the umambiguous primacy which had once been his; while the comparatively tight personal subordination to a leader necessary to the success of a hunting party could be relaxed in proportion as grain fields became the center around which life revolved. Among predominantly pastoral peoples, however, religious-political institutions took a quite different turn. To protect the flocks from animal predators required the same courage and social discipline which hunters had always needed. Among pastoralists, likewise, the principal economic activity- focused, as among the earliest hunters, on a parasitic relation to animals- continued to be the special preserve of menfolk. Hence a system of patrilineal families, united into kinship groups under the authority of a chieftain responsible for daily decisions as to where to seek pasture, best fitted the conditions of pastoral life. In addition, pastoralists were likely to accord importance to the practices and discipline of war. After all, violent seizure of someone else’s animals or pasture grounds was the easiest and speediest way to wealth and might be the only means of survival in a year of scant vegetation. Such warlikeness was entirely alien to communities tilling the soil. Archeological remains from early Neolithic villages suggest remarkably peaceful societies. As long as cultivable land was plentiful, and as long as the labor of a single household could not produce a significant surplus, there can have been little incentive to war. Traditions of violence and hunting-party organization presumably withered in such societies, to be revived only when pastoral conquest superimposed upon peaceable villagers the elements of warlike organization from which civilized political institutions without exception descend.

is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female’s offspring—one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently—even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as “sneaky fuckers.

Taggart slapped him on the shoulder, one of those American male gestures that let a man know he was both stupid and tolerated. “Maybe that’s why you couldn’t tell the difference between the chick who wanted to kill you and the ones who were in it for your cash. As for me, give me a badass chick every day of the week. You say you’re looking for a helpmate? Badass chick will not only cook your breakfast, she’ll take care of the assassins trying to kill you, give you the best blow job of your life, and scare off all the people you don’t want around. You can keep your delicate chicks. Give me a Russian mob princess. There’s a class of women who know how to treat a man right.

I have spoken of reinventing marriage, of marriages achieving their rebirth in the middle age of the partners. This phenomenon has been called the 'comedy of remarriage' by Stanley Cavell, whose Pursuits of Happiness, a film book, is perhaps the best marriage manual ever published. One must, however, translate his formulation from the language of Hollywood, in which he developed it, into the language of middle age: less glamour, less supple youth, less fantasyland. Cavell writes specifically of Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s in which couples -- one partner is often the dazzling Cary Grant -- learn to value each other, to educate themselves in equality, to remarry. Cavell recognizes that the actresses in these movie -- often the dazzling Katherine Hepburn -- are what made them possible. If read not as an account of beautiful people in hilarious situations, but as a deeply philosophical discussion of marriage, his book contains what are almost aphorisms of marital achievement. For example: ....'[The romance of remarriage] poses a structure in which we are permanently in doubt who the hero is, that is, whether it is the male or female who is the active partner, which of them is in quest, who is following whom.' Cary grant & Katherine Hepburn "Above all, despite the sexual attractiveness of the actors in the movies he discusses, Cavell knows that sexuality is not the ultimate secret in these marriage: 'in God's intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage. Here is the reason that these relationships strike us as having the quality of friendship, a further factor in their exhilaration for us.' "He is wise enough, moreover, to emphasize 'the mystery of marriage by finding that neither law nor sexuality (nor, by implication, progeny) is sufficient to ensure true marriage and suggesting that what provides legitimacy is the mutual willingness for remarriage, for a sort of continuous affirmation. Remarriage, hence marriage, is, whatever else it is, an intellectual undertaking.

One article on reproductive strategies was titled "Sneaky Fuckers." Kya laughed. As is well known, the article began, in nature, usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics, such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests, and superior knowledge secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are thereby inseminated with the best DNA around, which is passed on to the female's offspring- one of the most powerful phenomena in the adaptation and continuance of life. Plus, the females get the best territory for their young. However, some stunted males, not strong, adorned, or smart enough to hold good territories, possess bags of tricks to fool the females. They parade their smaller forms around in pumped-up postures or shout frequently- even if in shrill voices. By relying on pretense and false signals, they manage to grab a copulation here or there. Pint-sized male bullfrogs, the author wrote, hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates. When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others. The imposter males were referred to as "sneaky fuckers." Kya remembered, those many years ago, Ma warning her older sisters about young men who overrevved their rusted-out pickups or drove jalopies around with radios blaring. "Unworthy boys make a lot of noise," Ma had said. She read a consolation for females. Nature is audacious enough to ensure that the males who send out dishonest signals or go from one female to the next almost always end up alone. Another article delved into the wild rivalries between sperm. Across most life-forms, males compete to inseminate females. Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other's flesh. Though very ritualized, the conflicts can still end in mutilations. To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods. Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removes sperm ejected by a previous opponent before he supplies his own. Kya dropped the journal on her lap, her mind drifting with the clouds. Some female insects eat their mates, overstressed mammal mothers abandon their young, many males design risky or shifty ways to outsperm their competitors. Nothing seemed too indecorous as long as the tick and the tock of life carried on. She knew this was not a dark side to Nature, just inventive ways to endure against all odds. Surely for humans there was more.

be apart. Despite getting rejected by my top-choice school, I was starting to really believe in myself again based on all the positive feedback we continued to get on our videos. And besides, I knew I could always reapply to Emerson the following year and transfer. • • • College started out great, with the best part being my newly found freedom. I was finally on my own and able to make my own schedule. And not only was Amanda with me, I’d already made a new friend before the first day of classes from a Facebook page that was set up for incoming freshmen. I started chatting with a pretty girl named Chloe who mentioned that she was also going to do the film and video concentration. Fitchburg isn’t located in the greatest neighborhood, but the campus has lots of green lawns and old brick buildings that look like mansions. My dorm room was a forced triple—basically a double that the school added bunk beds to in order to squeeze one extra person in. I arrived first and got to call dibs on the bunk bed that had an empty space beneath it. I moved my desk under it and created a little home office for myself. I plastered the walls with Futurama posters and made up the bed with a new bright green comforter and matching pillows. My roommates were classic male college stereotypes—the football player and the stoner. Their idea of decorating was slapping a Bob Marley poster and a giant ad for Jack Daniels on the wall.

Today, it is becoming possible for [the girl] to take her future in her hands, instead of putting it in those of the man. If she is absorbed by studies, sports, a professional training, or a social and political activity, she frees herself from the male obsession; she is less preoccupied by love and sexual conflicts. However, she has a harder time than the young man in accomplishing herself as an autonomous individual. . . . [N]either her family nor customs assist her attempts. Besides, even if she chooses independence, she still makes a place in her life for the man, for love. She will often be afraid of missing her destiny as a woman if she gives herself over entirely to any undertaking. She does not admit this feeling to herself: but it is there, it distorts all her best efforts, it sets up limits.

Homo sapiens is a creature that over vast areas of the earth, in the countries and continents and centuries that the history books and the newsreels neglect because nothing ‘interesting’ has happened in them, has succeeded in living the moderate and mainly cooperative life to be expected of cousins of the hedonic apes. Almost all men spend most of their lives in this way. Most men spend all their lives in this way. But because all our governance is based on male bonding, and male bonding on at best a low-powered rumbling of aggression, accompanied by the hallucinatory visions which keep that aggression alive, we are constantly in danger of seeing our communities revert at intervals into the horrible agonic semblance of a troop of baboons. Baboons, moreover, with their finger on the button that can fire off an H-bomb.

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame; -- we have beaconed the world's night. A city: -- and we have built it, these and I. An emperor: -- we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such -- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns.... Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; -- All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. ---- Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers.... But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved.

Imagination is the ability to produce new ideas without the need of time to stop and actually think about it. I'll produce elevator buttons - I bought that business from Jarod Kintz, who was only selling it, because he found a new, more profitable job – male prostitution (he’s selling his grandpa’s services, not his own, because his own are virtually non-existent – he’s a monk now, and monks are sworn to celibacy, you know, or should, by now). Buy now - grieve later. Two 5th floor buttons for your floorless cardboard-built tree house, for the price of one, 7-story tall tree, which, for the purpose of this story we’ll call Nathan. Nathan sends you its best regards and wishes you a happy, silent, well-watered-down life, which, coming from a tree isn’t really that much, however, as you know - trees aren’t regular customers in the land of walking and talking, and it took quite a lot of convincing to make him come over and say that. Meow.

Luigi, the art teacher, holds up his brush, and we all do the same. I’m not quite sure why we’re mirroring his action, but Luigi is very compelling, more than capable of making four excited girls calm down and concentrate on what he’s telling us. I think it’s partly because he’s very serious. Either he doesn’t have a sense of humor, or it’s extremely well hidden. This, as I’m perfectly aware from years of a girls-only school, is a crucially important quality for male teachers. There aren’t that many of them in a girls’ school, and unless they look like the back of a bus, they inevitably become huge crush-objects. Little girls follow them around in packs, giggling madly, turning bright red and running away when the teacher turns to look at them; older girls wear the shortest skirts and tightest tops they can get away with, and do a lot of what Kelly calls hair-flirting. Male teachers are usually pretty good at coping with the flirting techniques: the best way to get under their skin, forge a special bond with them, is to share their sense of humor, make them laugh. The clever girls know this; the pretty ones usually don’t, because they tend to rely too much on their looks. Of course, the ones who are both clever and pretty do especially well, but that’s true for everything in life.

13. If the goal is to build up one's sexual energy, what's the harm of sleeping with a lot of different women (or men) to increase your ching chi? Chia: The goal is not to build up one's sexual energy—it is to transform raw sexual energy into a refined subtle energy. Sex is only one means of doing that. Promiscuity can easily lower your energy if you choose partners with moral or physical weakness. If you lie with degenerates, it may hurt you, in that you can temporarily acquire your partner's vileness. By exchanging subtle energy, you actually absorb the other's substance. You become the other person and assume new karmic burdens. This is why old couples resemble each other so closely: they have exchanged so much energy that they are made of the same life-stuff. This practice accelerates this union, but elevates it to a higher level of spiritual experience. So the best advice I can give is to never compromise your integrity of body, mind and spirit. In choosing a lover you are choosing your destiny, so make sure you love the woman with whom you have sex. Then you will be in harmony with what flows from the exchange and your actions will be proper. If you think you can love two women at once, be ready to spend double the chi to transform and balance their energy. I doubt if many men can really do that and feel deep serenity. For the sake of simplicity, limit yourself to one woman at a time. It takes a lot of time and energy to cultivate the subtle energies to a deep level. It is impossible to define love precisely. You have to consult your inner voice. But cultivating your chi energy sensitizes you to your conscience. What was a distant whisper before may become a very loud voice. For your own sake, do not abandon your integrity for the sake of physical pleasure or the pretense that you are doing deep spiritual exercises. If you sleep with one whom you don't love, your subtle energies will not be in balance and psychic warfare can begin. This will take its toll no matter how far apart you are physically until you sever or heal the psychic connection. It's better to be honest in the beginning. For the same reason make love only when you feel true tenderness within yourself. Your power to love will thus grow stronger. Selfish or manipulative use of sex even with someone with whom you are in love can cause great disharmony. If you feel unable to use your sexual power lovingly, then do not use it at all! Sex is a gleaming, sharp, two-edged sword, a healing tool that can quickly become a weapon. If used for base purposes, it cuts you mercilessly. If you haven't found a partner with whom you can be truly gentle, then simply touch no one. Go back to building your internal energy and when it gets high you will either attract a quality lover or learn a deeper level within yourself.

It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.

The captain? Sophia stood staring numbly after him. Had he just said he’d introduce her to the captain? Of someone else was the captain, then who on earth was this man? One thing was clear. Whoever he was, he had her trunks. And he was walking away. Cursing under her breath, Sophia picked up her skirts and trotted after him, dodging boatmen and barrels and coils of tarred rope as she pursued him down the quay. A forest of tall masts loomed overhead, striping the dock with shadow. Breathless, she regained his side just as he neared the dock’s edge. “But…aren’t you Captain Grayson?” “I,” he said, pitching her smaller trunk into a waiting rowboat, “am Mr. Grayson, owner of the Aphrodite and principle investor in her cargo.” The owner. Well, that was some relief. The tavern-keeper must have been confused. The porter deposited her larger truck alongside the first, and Mr. Grayson dismissed him with a word and a coin. He plunked one polished Hessian on the rowboat’s seat and shifted his weight to it, straddling the gap between boat and dock. Hand outstretched, he beckoned her with an impatient twitch of his fingers. “Miss Turner?” Sophia inched closer to the dock’s edge and reached one gloved hand toward his, considering how best to board the bobbing craft without losing her dignity overboard. The moment her fingers grazed his palm, his grin tightened over her hand. He pulled swiftly, wrenching her feet from the dock and a gasp from her throat. A moment of weightlessness-and then she was aboard. Somehow his arm had whipped around her waist, binding her to his solid chest. He released her just as quickly, but a lilt of the rowboat pitched Sophia back into his arms. “Steady there,” he murmured through a small smile. “I have you.” A sudden gust of wind absconded with his hat. He took no notice, but Sophia did. She noticed everything. Never in her life had she felt so acutely aware. Her nerves were draw taut as harp strings, and her senses hummed. The man radiated heat. From exertion, most likely. Or perhaps from a sheer surplus of simmering male vigor. The air around them was cold, but he was hot. And as he held her tight against his chest, Sophia felt that delicious, enticing heat burn through every layer of her clothing-cloak, gown, stays, chemise, petticoat, stockings, drawers-igniting desire in her belly. And sparking a flare of alarm. This was a precarious position indeed. The further her torso melted into his, the more certainly he would detect her secret: the cold, hard bundle of notes and coin lashed beneath her stays. She pushed away from him, dropping onto the seat and crossing her arms over her chest. Behind him, the breeze dropped his hat into a foamy eddy. He still hadn’t noticed its loss. What he noticed was her gesture of modesty, and he gave her a patronizing smile. “Don’t concern yourself, Miss Turner. You’ve nothing in there I haven’t seen before.” Just for that, she would not tell him. Farewell, hat.

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world's night. A city:—and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:—we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming . . . . These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such— The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;— All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. ——Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers. . . . But the best I've known Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.

I pledge always to demonstrate respect for myself. I pledge always to demonstrate respect for my peers. I pledge always to demonstrate respect for my teachers. I pledge always to demonstrate respect for every adult in my school. I pledge always to demonstrate respect for my parents. I pledge never to resort to fighting or uncontrollable arguing to solve my problems. I pledge never to use or sell drugs. I pledge never to join a gang. I pledge never to engage in criminal activity. I pledge always to strive to be the best young man that I can be.

So she was still single. She wondered sometimes if Blake was being deprived of male companionship solely because of her attitudes. It bothered her, but she didn’t want to change. “Snow is awesome,” he sighed, using a word that he used to denote only the best things in his life. Cherry pie was awesome. So was baseball, if the Atlanta Braves were playing, and football if the Dallas Cowboys were. She smiled at his dark head, so like her own. He had her slender build, too, but he had his father’s green eyes. Bob had been a handsome man. Handsome and far too brave for his own good. Dead at twenty-seven, she sighed, and for what? She folded her arms across her chest, cozy in the oversize red flannel shirt that she wore over well-broken-in jeans. “It’s freezing, that’s what it is,” she informed her offspring. “And it isn’t awesome; it’s irritating. Apparently, the electric generator goes out every other day, and the only man who can fix it stays drunk.” “That cowboy seems to know how,” Blake said hesitantly. Maggie agreed reluctantly. “I know. Things were running great until our foreman asked for time off to spend Christmas with his wife’s family in Pennsylvania. That leaves me in charge, and what do I know about running a ranch?” she moaned. “I grew up on a small farm, but I don’t know beans about how to manage this kind of place, and the men realize it. I suppose they don’t have any confidence in working for a secretary, even just temporarily.” “Well, there’s always Mr. Hollister,” Blake said with pursed lips and a wicked grin. She glared at him. “Mr. Hollister hates me. He hates you, too, in fact, but you don’t seem to let that stand in the way of your admiration for the man.” She threw up her hands, off on her favorite subject again. “For heaven’s sake, he’s a cross between a bear and a moose! He never comes off his mountain except when he wants to cuss somebody out or raise hell!” “He’s lonely,” Blake pointed out. “He lives all by himself. It’s hard going, I’ll bet, and he has to eat his own cooking.” He sat up enthusiastically, his thick hair over his brow. “Grandpa said he once knew a man who quit working for Mr. Hollister just because the cook got sick and Mr. Hollister had to feed the men.” Maggie glanced at her son with a wicked gleam in her eyes. “He probably fed them some of his

One day I was through Strachan’s Corner just hanging out, and they must have picked up Scrooge earlier for a pep talk, so they were now dropping him back home in one of their police vehicle. Supt. Strachan was in the back seat talking with him, while a male officer was driving. So I asked her, what were some of the things you used to say to Scrooge? I used to tell him it is not worth it, You are hurting people. You are only going to end up in jail for the rest of your life, or you are going to end up in the grave. I knew that he was listening to me. I would talk to him and encourage him. My other colleagues used to say I was soft on crime because of what I was doing, but I could be tuff. I am a mother of two sons; just ask my sons how tuff I can be. If I feel that I have done the best that I can, and cannot do no more than that is it. This was what I was telling those kids down there. I told them if you do not change, you are going to die. Sad to say, that is what happened to some of them eventually. The best came out of you and others in another way. Supt. Allerdyce Strachan, the first female officer to rise to the rank of superintendent on the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

One really has to ask oneself how Socrates managed to maneuver himself into such conjugal misery, and this question can be posed in several variations. If Xantippe really was from the start the kind of woman the legend says she was, we would show very little understanding for our great philosopher because then it was his own carelessness that led him to choose precisely her and no other woman. Or is he supposed to have thought, ironic as he was, that a surly woman is just what a thinker needs? If, from the beginning, he recognized her "true nature" and put up with it, then this indicates deplorable marital behavior on his part because he thus unreasonably expected a women to spend her whole life with a man who obviously at best endured her but did not appreciate her. Conversely, if Xantippe had become as she is described only during her marriage to Socrates, then the philosopher would really come into a questionable light because then indisputably he himself must have caused his wife's vexation without having interested himself in it. No matter how the story is turned, Xantippe's moods fall back on Socrates. This is a genuine philosophical problem: How did the thinker and questioner manage not to solve the puzzle of Xantippe's bad temper? This great midwife of truth was obviously unable to let his wife's rage express itself or to help her find a language in which she would have been able to express the grounds and justifications for her behavior. The failure of a philosopher often consists not in false answers but in neglecting to pose the right questions —and in denying some experiences the right to become "problems." His experiences with Xantippe must have been of this kind—a misery that is not given the dignity of obtruding into the male problem-monopoly. Philosphers fail when they endure as a naturally given evil that for which they are to blame; indeed, their capacity for "wisely" enduring it is itself an intellectual scandal, a misuse of wisdom in favor of blindness. With Socrates, it seems, this misuse immediately avenged itself. When a thinker cannot refrain from equating humanity with masculinity, reality will strike back in the philosopher's marital hell. The stories about this thus have, I think, also a kynical meaning. They reveal the real reason for philosophicalclerical celibacy in our civilization. A definite dominating kind of idealism, philosophy, and grand theory becomes possible only when a certain "other kind" of experience is systematically avoided

Deep and I would never do anything to you that you didn’t want us to do, my lady.” He looked at his brother. “Would we, Deep?” Deep looked at her speculatively. “Not unless it was for her own good. Which this very well may be, as you know, Brother. After all, we can’t let her be attacked by every stray male who smells her scent just because she’s a little squeamish about letting us mark her.” “No!” Lock held up a hand to stop him when he started to approach Kat. “Stop it, Deep. You know you wouldn’t act against Kat’s wishes, so stop pretending you would.” “Who’s pretending?” Deep growled. “I absolutely would act against her wishes if I thought her life was in danger and what I was doing was in her best interest.” Kat glared at him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. I guess I’m just too stupid to know what’s good for me.” “No, you’re just too damn tempting for your own good.” Suddenly Deep was right in front of her, cupping her cheek and looking down into her eyes. “You have no idea how alluring you are, do you, little Kat?” he said softly. “With your full curves and your hot scent. No male in the universe could be near you without wanting to fuck you.” “Leave me the hell alone.” Kat jerked away from his touch. “I’ve had enough of you for one day.” Turning, she marched to the spiral staircase. “You’re going to have to put up with a lot more of me during the party tonight. A lot more of both of us,” Deep called. Kat

After Steve’s death I received letters of condolence from people all over the world. I would like to thank everyone who sent such thoughtful sympathy. Your kind words and support gave me the strength to write this book and so much more. Carolyn Male is one of those dear people who expressed her thoughts and feelings after we lost Steve. It was incredibly touching and special, and I wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude. I’m happy to share it with you. It is with a still-heavy heart that I rise this evening to speak about the life and death of one of the greatest conservationists of our time: Steve Irwin. Many people describe Steve Irwin as a larrikin, inspirational, spontaneous. For me, the best way I can describe Steve Irwin is formidable. He would stand and fight, and was not to be defeated when it came to looking after our environment. When he wanted to get things done--whether that meant his expansion plans for the zoo, providing aid for animals affected by the tsunami and the cyclones, organizing scientific research, or buying land to conserve its environmental and habitat values--he just did it, and woe betide anyone who stood in his way. I am not sure I have ever met anyone else who was so determined to get the conservation message out across the globe, and I believe he achieved his aim. What I admired most about him was that he lived the conservation message every day of his life. Steve’s parents, Bob and Lyn, passed on their love of the Australian bush and their passion for rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife. Steve took their passion and turned it into a worldwide crusade. The founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide in 2002 provided Steve and Terri with another vehicle to raise awareness of conservation by allowing individuals to become personally involved in protecting injured, threatened, or endangered wildlife. It also has generated a working fund that helps with the wildlife hospital on the zoo premises and supports work with endangered species in Asia and Africa. Research was always high on Steve’s agenda, and his work has enabled a far greater understanding of crocodile behavior, population, and movement patterns. Working with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the University of Queensland, Steve was an integral part of the world’s first Crocs in Space research program. His work will live on and inform us for many, many years to come. Our hearts go out to his family and the Australia Zoo family. It must be difficult to work at the zoo every day with his larger-than-life persona still very much evident. Everyone must still be waiting for him to walk through the gate. His presence is everywhere, and I hope it lives on in the hearts and minds of generations of wildlife warriors to come. We have lost a great man in Steve Irwin. It is a great loss to the conservation movement. My heart and the hearts of everyone here goes out to his family. Carolyn Male, Member for Glass House, Queensland, Australia October 11, 2006

      Later we went back to Ryan’s house and hung out. He seemed like a cool guy, and we had a lot in common. Nothing about Ryan suggested that his beliefs were fundamentally different from mine. Ryan offered Katie and me something to drink after a while: he had OJ, Coke, bottled water, and rice milk. I’d never heard of rice milk, so I asked if I could give it a try. It wasn’t the best thing I’d ever tasted, but it wasn’t bad either.       Why, I wondered, would this guy my own age deprive himself of a glass of milk, a Big Mac, or a plate of cheese fries? Given how much I enjoyed those things, his decision to abstain based on a set of beliefs actually struck me as rather commendable. He had to feel pretty strongly about it to refuse something so delicious. So I asked him why he chose to be vegan. His answer—that he wasn’t willing to cause suffering to other living creatures, and then his recitation of lots of intense and awful details about that suffering—changed my life.       Effective that day, I was vegan, and have been ever since. It just made sense. Why should I eat something that caused an animal to suffer when I could choose to buy something else? Rice milk wasn’t as good as milk, I thought, but it wasn’t bad enough to justify buying cow’s milk, which, as Ryan explained, came from an animal that was continually impregnated to maximize her dairy production, and her male calves were likely slaughtered for veal.

Self-sacrifice is the leit-motif of most of the marital games played by women, from the crudest (‘I’ve given you the best years of my life’) to the most sophisticated (‘I only went to bed with him so’s he’d promote you’). For so much sacrificed self the expected reward is security, and seeing that a reward is expected it cannot properly speaking be called self-sacrifice at all. It is in fact a kind of commerce, and onein which the female must always be the creditor. Of course, it is also practised by men who explain their failure to do exciting jobs or risk insecurity because of their obligations to wife and/or children, but it is not invariable, whereas it is hard to think of a male/female relationship in which the element of female self-sacrifice was absent. So long as women must live vicariously, through men, they must labour at making themselves indispensable and this is the full-time job that is generally wrongly called altruism. Properly speaking, altruism is an absurdity. Women are self-sacrificing in direct proportion to their incapacity to offer anything but this sacrifice. They sacrifice what they never had: a self.

Summing Up • Central to the debates about the applicability of Romans 1: 24-27 to contemporary committed gay and lesbian relationships is Paul’s claim that the sexual misbehavior he describes in these verses is “unnatural,” or “contrary to nature.” We must understand the moral logic underlying this claim in order to discern how to apply these verses to contemporary life. • The Greek word that Paul uses for “nature” here (phusis) does not occur in the Septuagint, the early translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Rather, it arises in Jewish discourse after 200 BCE, when Jewish writers make use of it as a Stoic category in order to interpret Jewish ethics to Gentiles. • In the ancient world there were three dimensions to the understanding of nature, and we find each of these reflected in Paul’s use of the word: ° Nature was understood as one’s individual nature or disposition. Paul’s language in Romans 1 thus reflects the ancient notion that same-sex eroticism was driven by an insatiable thirst for the exotic by those who were not content with “natural” desires for the same sex. The ancient world had no notion of sexual orientation. ° Nature was also understood as what contributed to the good order of society as a whole. In this sense, it looks very much like social convention, and many ancient understandings of what is natural, particularly those concerning gender roles, seem quaint at best to us today. ° Nature was also understood in the ancient world in relationship to biological processes, particularly procreation. Paul’s references to sexual misbehavior in Romans 1: 24-27 as “unnatural” spring in part from their nonprocreative character. Yet there is no evidence that people in the ancient world linked natural gender roles more specifically to the complementary sexual organs of male and female, apart from a general concern with the “naturalness” of procreation. • While we as modern persons should still seek a convergence of the personal, social, and physical worlds, just as the ancients did under the category of nature, we must recognize, even apart from the question of same-sex relationships, that this convergence will look different to us than it looked in the ancient world. • The biblical vision of a new creation invites us to imagine what living into a deeper vision of “nature” as the convergence of individual disposition, social order, and the physical world might look like, under the guidance and power of the Spirit of God. This might also entail the cultivation of a vision for how consecrated and committed gay and lesbian relationships might fit into such a new order.

Ginsburg maintained that restrictions on abortion are best understood not as a private matter between women and their male doctors; instead, the restrictions violate women’s constitutional right to equality by limiting their ability to define their own life choices, imposing burdens that are not imposed on men. If Roe v. Wade had been based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution instead of on the Due Process Clause, Ginsburg insisted, it would have been more constitutionally convincing.

Living with a small and non-thick penis can be devastating to a man for more than one reason. He lacks a certain feeling of self-confidence with this problem and many areas of life will begin to suffer. For years men have been dealing with this problem. Making excuses for their poor sexual performance, avoiding intimate contact with the women they love and often times sinking into a deep depression that is hard to break. Sikander-e-Azam plus is the world's best male enhancement package to combine safe, natural and effective ingredients to treat overall sexual problem both internally and externally. It provides you with a safe chemical free alternative to boost your overall sexual health. Our penis enlargement medicine Sikander-e-Azam plus capsules are the best in the market due to its fresh herbal ingredients.

Leelan,” Wrath barked as he exploded up from his chair. There were all kinds of deep-voiced greetings, but his brothers got out of the way so that she had a clear shot into his arms. And as he lifted her up, he was careful to put no pressure on her belly. “How are you?” he whispered in her ear, knowing that one of these days, she was going to answer that she was having contractions. “Fine and dandy. Oh, my God, I got the best stuff! I had to go blue—I mean, whatever, we’re having a boy. The crib and dressing table are perfect—right, iAm?” The Shadow answered, “Perfect.” No doubt the poor bastard had no interest in the shit at all, but that didn’t matter. He was another one who had stuck by Beth and been her protector in the human world—and Wrath knew the why, of course. It was iAm’s way of paying the household back for letting him and his it’s-complicated brother stay at the mansion after their pad at the Commodore had been compromised. Plus, it was pretty obvi that he liked Beth in a nonromantic kind of way. “Right? I know, right?” Beth hugged Wrath’s neck so hard he couldn’t swallow. “I’m so excited! I want to meet him now!” “Is this nesting?” Wrath asked in the direction of where he’d heard Z’s voice last. “Yeah. And wait for it. You still have Diaper Genies and bottles to get through.” “We’re going Born Free,” Beth informed him, like he knew what that meant. “In case my milk doesn’t come in.” Wrath just sat down in the chair and arranged her on his lap, content to ease back and let her enjoy making her report. And the brothers and the fighters? They rallied right around, asking questions like big brothers would. Any one of them would have laid down his life for her or that young in her womb. It was enough to make a male have to blink a little faster.

Our sprint coach, Barry Ross, has a most unusual zoo. In fact, he can engineer mutants at will. His best female distance runner has deadlifted 415 lbs at a body weight of 132 lbs. His youngest male lifter, 11 years old, has dead-lifted 225 lbs at a body weight of 108 lbs.

Mid May 2012 Dearest Andy, After all these years, you have not changed. You’ll always be the Valet I’ve grown to love and adore. When I read your email, I can hear the sound of your voice as it was so long ago. Although we are miles apart, I continue to feel you close to my heart. After our separation, I looked for a ‘big brother’ and lover like you and failed miserably, until Walter came into my life. He inquires about you persistently. I think he is hoping for a triplet relationship, similar to the one we shared with Oscar. He thinks highly of you. Walter is very similar to you, in that you both know that you are gods who could do no wrong. In the majority of cases, that is how I remember you. Of course we both have our shortcomings, as humans do. The wonderful times we shared definitely overshadowed the negative moments. I fear that having two alpha males in the same house will be a disaster because you’ll both be competing for power and lording your masculinity over me. That’s scary! LOL! That said, my partner and I discuss you frequently. The difference between you two is that he fully supports the writing of my memoirs while you, my friend, have made it clear that writing about my adolescent life experiences isn’t a good idea. I respect both your differing opinions, but this is something I will have to decide on my own. I sincerely believe that now is the moment to tell my story and I will tell it without hurting or exposing anyone unnecessarily. I’ve changed the names of the schools, the society, and, of course, the people that played an important role in my young life. Do you remember when we were in Las Vegas working on “Sacred Sex In Sacred Places”? The Count told us that Howard Hughes was in town and you dragged me along for an audience with the tycoon? You desperately wanted an apprenticeship in his aerodynamics engineering company. I remember the episode well. That experience is definitely worth documenting in my memoirs. We will have many opportunities to reminisce, but for now I am simply happy that we are communicating regularly. Tell me more about yourself in your next correspondence. I love you and miss you. Wishing you all the best! Young.

My heart jumped. “Yes. Yes I do. Chris, go on to the Mayo Clinic without me. I’ll make out fine, and I swear not to marry anyone until you are back and give your approval. Worry about finding someone yourself. After all, I’m not the only woman who resembles our mother.” He flared. “Why the hell do you put it like that? It’s you, not her! It’s everything about you that’s not like her that makes me need and want you so! “Chris, I want a man I can sleep with, who will hold me when I feel afraid, and kiss me, and make me believe I am not evil or unworthy.” My voice broke as tears came. “I wanted to show Momma what I could do, and be the best prima ballerina, but now that Julian’s gone all I want to do is cry when I hear ballet music. I miss him so, Chris.” I put my head on his chest and sobbed. “I could have been nicer to him—then he wouldn’t have struck out in anger. He needed me and I failed him. You don’t need me. You’re stronger than he was. Paul doesn’t really need me either, or he would insist on marrying me right away. . . .” “We could live together, and, and . . .” And here he faltered as his face turned red. I finished for him, “No! Can’t you see it just wouldn’t work?” “No, I guess it wouldn’t work for you,” he said stiffly. “But I’m a fool; I’ve always been a fool, wanting the impossible. I’m even fool enough to want us locked up again, the way we were—with me the only male available to you!” “You don’t mean that!” He seized me in his arms. “Don’t I? God help me but I do mean it! You belonged to me then, and in its own peculiar way our life together made me better than I would have been . . . and you made me want you, Cathy. You could have made me hate you, instead you made me love you.” I shook my head, denying this; I’d only done what came naturally from watching my mother with men. I stared at him, trembling as he released me. I stumbled as I turned to run toward the house. Before me Paul loomed up! Startled I faltered guiltily and stared at him as he turned abruptly and strode in the opposite direction. Oh! He’d been watching and listening! I pivoted about, then raced back to where Chris had his head resting against the trunk of the oldest oak. “See what you’ve done!” I cried out. “Forget me, Chris! I’m not the one and only woman alive!” He appeared blind as he turned his head and he said, “You are for me the only woman alive.

ROOT CHAKRA—MULADHARA The Root Chakra is at the root of your tailbone and is your equilibrium hub. You feel stressed, shaky, and dizzy or as if you have a vertigo when it's out of balance. You feel unable to make progress in your life, on personal or professional grounds, when this chakra becomes overactive and you feel stuck in your key relationships. All situations feel deeply unsettling to you, as if the change rests on your very being. This is because the Root Chakra is your prime balance point between the ‘Below and the Above’. An unbalanced or unattended Root Chakra can influence any aspect of your life, which is why many energy workers and Reiki practitioners take a bottom-up approach to chakra practice, beginning from the Root (or even deeper from the Earth Star) and moving upward to the Third Hand, Crown, and Soul Star Core networks. You are free to move freely in the universe when your Root Chakra is healthy, visible and working well, realizing you are safe, protected and seen. In Sanskrit, this chakra's name, Muladhara, means "foundation" or "pillar." That's where male sexual energy resides in the physical body (the Sacral Chakra sits on feminine sexual energy). Where the Earth Star Chakra is a gateway to the Earthly Kingdom of rocks, stones, and subterranean pathways of spirit animals and insects, the Root Chakra is a portal to our connection with our own physical realm— the physical goods and systems that keep us safe in the three-dimensional world we inhabit right now. The Root Chakra's masculine strength isn't explicitly male; it's a protective force field that can offer anybody a profound sense of comfort regardless of their sexual orientation or affiliation. You will find a stable partner for your journey as you begin to communicate with the masculine energy source, one that can support, sustain, and lead you toward the best outcome for your work and life. In terms of energy, manifestation is the act of forming thought, or of creating your desires. The very act of creation demands that you indulge in a greater density of matter, drawing in forces to create new form that involves a strong binding of your soul to the Earth. If you manifest from an ungrounded place, it will be temporary and fleeting to your creations. Imagine building a building without a firm foundation. You wouldn't even imagine doing this, would you? Well then, neither should you try to create or manifest from an ungrounded floating position within the ethers.

It has long been contended that, for some – and of course, never us, but always them – life as a slave proves more beneficial than detrimental…. For this rationalization to be effective, the victims need to be transformed – in the mind of the captor/master – from oppressed beings to thankful underlings; grateful for being used, appreciated, and protected, while fulfilling the needs of their superiors. Wrote Aristotle: For all tame animals there is an advantage in being under human control, as this secures their survival. And as regards the relationship between male and female, the former is naturally superior, the latter inferior, the former rules and the latter is subject. By analogy, the same must necessarily apply to mankind as a whole. Therefore all men who differ from one another by as much as the soul differs from the body or man from w a wild beast (and that is the sate of those who can work by using their bodies, and for whom that is the best they can do) – these people are slaves by nature, and it is better for them to be subject to this kind of control, and it is better for the other creatures I have mentioned. For a man who is able to belong to another person is by nature a slave (for that is why he belong so someone else)…. Assistance regarding the necessities of life is provided by both groups, by slaves and by domestic animals. Nature must therefore have intended to make the bodies of free men and of slaves different also; slaves’ bodies strong for the services they have to do, those of free men upright and not much use for that kind of work, but instead useful for community life.

As Apex trained his gun on the male who had given him the best blow job of his life about twelve hours before, he really wanted to shot the wolven. He was praying —praying— that the motherfucker would do something stupid. Which was saying something for an atheist.

Becoming an adult male is indeed nothing short of a tragedy; and if you consider this statement to be a little on the melodramatic side, think of it this way: if one observes the inner life of most grown men (though I would suggest that the best place to start is, naturally, one’s own soul) one would probably find that, regardless of their external achievements and lifestyles, the quality of their relationships or the lack thereof — there would be a gaping abyss between the boy who once longed to grow up and go into the world and the man who he had ended up becoming.

We know life can be hard, and yet we feel sorry for ourselves when it isn’t fair. From this point forward, accept the following as Goggins’s laws of nature: You will be made fun of. You will feel insecure. You may not be the best all the time. You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female, male, gay, lesbian or [fill in your identity here] in a given situation. There will be times when you feel alone. Get over it!

I don’t want to generalize, but the fact that men, in the cultures I know best, are encouraged to quash the emotional dimension of their lives is something that makes me say, sure, male academics love their stuff, but I’m not sure they’re even aware of it. They think of the love they have for their discipline as a balanced and nuanced appreciation of the virtuous or the valuable.

Prepare yourself! We know life can be hard, and yet we feel sorry for ourselves when it isn’t fair. From this point forward, accept the following as Goggins’s laws of nature: You will be made fun of. You will feel insecure. You may not be the best all the time. You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female, male, gay, lesbian or [fill in your identity here] in a given situation. There will be times when you feel alone. Get over it!

God says in the Qur’an That which is with you will come to an end, but that which is with God remains. And He shall surely pay those who were patient their reward according to the best of what they used to do. / Whoever acts righteously, whether male or female, and is a believer, him verily We shall revive with a goodly life. And We shall surely pay them their reward according to the best of what they used to do. (Al-Nahl, 16:96–97) The goodly life (‘hayatan tayyibah’ in Arabic) mentioned here requires belief and virtue—and patience and steadfastness in these—but is true life. It is true because it is the life that the soul at peace will have in eternity. The soul at peace is truly alive.

Everyone wants to win. But to truly succeed- whether it is at a sport or at your job or in your life- you have to be willing to do the hard work, overcome the challenges, and male the sacrifices it takes to be the best at what you do.

And here we are hundreds of years later and you would think the male species would have evolved beyond punishing women over miscarrying, but sadly they have not, they keep repeating history. They use the female’s greatest gift, their ability to create life as a control method. And it's time it stops; the men need to grow and evolve. And nothing does that better to a human than suffering. It's the best teacher.

The Rosetta Stone of Women’s Behavior By Old, Fat, and Bald BRIFFAULT’S LAW: The female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place. There are a few corollaries I would add: Past benefit provided by the male does not provide for continued or future association. Any agreement where the male provides a current benefit in return for a promise of future association is null and void as soon as the male has provided the benefit (see corollary 1) A promise of future benefit has limited influence on current/future association, with the influence inversely proportionate to the length of time until the benefit will be given and directly proportionate to the degree to which the female trusts the male (which is not bloody likely). Deriving mutual benefits from a relationship is not a bad thing. Where Brokenman and the rest of us men lose the plot is when we expect past benefit provided to the woman to continue generating current or future association (see corollary 1). Loyalty, honor, gratitude, and duty are male values that we men project on women, but which very few, to no, women actually possess. We aren’t born with these values; they are drummed into us from the cradle on by society/culture, our families, and most definitely by the women in our lives (sorry, but that includes you too, Mom). Women get different indoctrination, so they have different values; mostly, for a woman, whatever is good for her and her (biological) children is what is best, full stop. So, do not expect that the woman in your life will be grateful, and sacrifice for you, when you can no longer provide for her and hers. And make no mistake, you have never been, and never will be, part of what is hers. What are hers will be first herself, then her (biological) children, then her parents, then her siblings, and then the rest of her blood relatives. The biological imperative has always been to extend her blood line. It stops there, and it always will.

It’s part of a woman’s hypergamous nature to always seek the best male that she could get. Warring tribe wins? Then the men in that tribe now become her best option for survival. Men have always been disposable protectors. Women have always selected the best men for survival. Even if that meant becoming a war bride to a conquering army that killed off, or enslaved, their family.

Girls who do not feel good about themselves need the affirmation of others, and that need, unfortunately, almost always empowers male desire. In other words, girls who hate their bodies do not make good decisions about partners, or about the kind of sexual activity that is in their best interest. Because they want to be wanted so much, they are susceptible to manipulation, to flattery, even to abuse.5

VIOLET LONGCOPE had, from the earliest signs of her daughter's incipient beauty, drilled into Clarabel's lovely head the warning that a single unwary submission of the heart to the wrong male charm could throw a girl perhaps irretrievably off the smooth tracks of the best laid life plan. The

The best portrait of this psychology comes from that very dead, very white European male: William Shakespeare, in his Othello. Iago just hated Othello, but he could not hope to defeat him in open confrontation. How then could he destroy him?  Iago’s strategy was to attack him where it would hurt most—through Othello’s passion for Desdemona. Iago hinted indirectly that she had been sleeping around, he spread subtle lies and innuendo about her faithfulness, he succeeded in raising a doubt in Othello’s mind about the most beautiful thing in his life, and he let that doubt work like a slow poison. Like the postmodernists, Iago’s only weapons were words. The only difference is that the postmodernists are not so subtle about their intended targets.

MARIE He’s gotta take off his clothes. LOLA Huh? (Closes door) MARIE These drawings are for my life class. LOLA (Consoled but still mystified) Oh. MARIE    (Sits on couch) Turk’s the best male model we’ve had all year. Lotsa athletes pose for us ’cause they’ve all got muscles. They’re easier to draw. LOLA You mean … he’s gonna pose naked? MARIE    (Laughs) No. The women do, but the men are always more proper. Turk’s going to pose in his track suit. LOLA    Oh. (Almost to herself) The women pose naked but the men don’t. (This strikes her as a startling inconsistency) If it’s all right for a woman, it oughta be for a man.

Traditionally the best lot in life for a male was to hitch his star to a powerful female and hope to be looked after, or else – for those born with valuable Understandings – to end up a pampered commodity in a seraglio, ready to be traded away or mated off as part of the constantly shifting power games between peer houses.

My heart wasn’t where Mike Seaver’s was—or the bulk of the male population’s. I never got a DUI because I didn’t drink. The only thing I ever smoked was a ham for Thanksgiving. Maybe I would have had more free time to get into trouble with girls if I wasn’t so busy killing rats to feed my snakes. All I wanted was to find one girl and be with her for life. July 25, 1987 I really wish that I will meet someone that is so special, and wants to be with me as much as I want to be with her and who will be excited for me about my career and will not be interested in Kirk Cameron the actor, star of Growing Pains. I’m looking for someone who could be my best friend. Someone who is not the least bit phony but who is just so honest and open about her feelings and who genuinely cares about mine and wants to share her feelings with me. Not too long after I wrote that journal entry, I met a girl on the set. She came in for a quick guest role, and we began seeing each other off set. I grew very fond of her and her family—especially her father, who later became very instrumental in answering my questions about God. Within a year, my immaturity had made a royal mess of that relationship and left that sweet girl heartbroken and confused. She was the last girl I went out with until the most breathtaking woman in the world entered my life.

Children were often born to Apache squaws who were with raiding parties. The Indians would permit their squaws to go with them on their raids, and if it so happened that a child was born the squaw would be left to take care of herself as best she could, or if another squaw was in the party and chose to remain with her sister in distress, she was allowed to do so. Within a reasonable time the squaw and her papoose would come into camp and there would be rejoicing if the papoose happened to be a male child, because that meant a future warrior. But if it happened to be a female, no notice would be taken of the new arrival. I have known squaws to give birth to a child, abandon it immediately and proceed on with the party, with no apparent injury. I knew one squaw of the Apaches who gave birth to twins, and she became so angry because there were two children instead of one that she stamped her offspring to death and left their little bodies for the vultures to devour. Comanche women were kinder to their children, and the births usually occurred in the villages. A woman in delicate health was not allowed to accompany her warrior on a raid, but had to remain in camp until the looked-for event happened. They carefully nourished the new-born babe and bestowed upon their children, male and female, that motherly affection that was the child’s due. What we would now term illegitimate children were rare among the Indians. There was virtue among the Indians and it was rigidly maintained. Of course there were times when a married woman “went wrong,” in which case her nose was cut off, but it was seldom that an unmarried girl departed from the paths of decency and gave birth to a child.

Just Plain Bill was one of the biggest (and first) successes of daytime radio, enjoying a run of more than two decades. It exploited a favored theme of producers Frank and Anne Hummert: life in a small town. The precise location of Hartville was not revealed, but it was always thought to be somewhere in the Midwest. The serial was unusual in at least two aspects: the protagonist was male, and the musical bridges were played on guitar and harmonica, giving it a sound quite unlike the organ-drenched serials around it. Bill Davidson was one of the first great philosophers of serial drama. He was the male counterpart of Ma Perkins, predating that staunch old mother of the air by almost a year. He ran a barbershop, but what Bill did best was meddle in the lives of his friends, all for their own good. He got involved under protest, arguing in that marvelously caring voice that “this is really none of my affair” while the announcer returned to put it in perspective: How can Bill, drawn into the middle of this romantic triangle, straighten out the lives of his friends?

We haven’t truly enabled all the people of this society to participate in self-government to the fullest extent of their potential. We haven’t come close, not in an age when our elected officials and their staffs are overwhelmingly white, male, and affluent. Nor have we truly enabled all the people of this society to participate fully in economic life as creators and contributors. Not when 48 percent of the new jobs in the country are low-wage jobs paying less than $15 an hour, and when tens of millions rely on government payments for subsistence. And we haven’t truly enabled the citizens of this country to be as powerful as possible. Not when voter turnout is rarely above 60 percent (at best) and when poor, nonwhite, or immigrant voters are still being disenfranchised.

Dr. Kent Kiehl, neuroscientist and author of The Psychopath Whisperer, a man who’s dedicated his life’s work to clinical brain imaging in order to understand mental illness, especially criminal psychopathy, says, “The best current estimate is that just less than one percent of all noninstitutionalized males age eighteen and over are psychopaths.

The relative gaiety of her sister’s life filled her with envy and she did her best to mix with the male customers. Yet she was not sufficiently self-confident about her looks or her manners. She tried copying the other waitresses by powdering her face and curling her hair, but it all struck her as rather pointless. As soon as she began to maker herself amiable, she felt that she was in some way betraying her own nature.

Even Margaret’s beloved Wordsworth fell short on the issue; for him, she quoted ruefully, the ideal woman should not be “Too bright and good / For Human nature’s daily food.” Margaret drew on examples from ancient myth, wherein “the idea of female perfection is as fully presented as that of male,” to show that women had been accorded greater respect in earlier times. In Egyptian mythology, “Isis is even more powerful than Osiris,” and “the Hindoo goddesses reign on the highest peaks of sanctification.” In Greek myth, “not only Beauty, Health and the Soul are represented under feminine attributes, but the Muses, the inspirers of all genius,” and “Wisdom itself . . . are feminine.” Margaret’s dream was to bring the dispirited “individual man” together with the disempowered woman—unite the two sides of the Great Hall’s classroom—and create, by merging the best attributes of each, “fully” perfected souls. Then, a nation of men and women will for the first time exist, she might have said, amending Waldo Emerson’s visionary claim.

But when we get these partnerships, all these “best friends” we married don’t text us back like our female best friends do. They can’t wipe a counter to save their lives. Don’t know how to vacuum. And their learned helplessness becomes the punch line to all our jokes. Memes lampoon this male inability to function. A TikTok video shows the face of an exasperated wife on the phone with her husband, who is presumably wandering the grocery store looking for ketchup, and she’s lip-syncing to the song from Hamilton, “Look at where you are. Look at where you started. The fact that you’re alive right now is a miracle.” Hilarious. These are the good men.