Fisking the New York Times’ Modern Man

More like modern pajama boy man-child. This New York Times article is so remarkably stupid that it has already been mocked across the entire internet.  However, as a manly man of manliness, it is my responsibility to address this piece of fuckwittery. The same way that as a professional working writer I am compelled to respond to stupid writing advice that might otherwise screw up aspiring authors, I have to Fisk this.

See, I have two sons. As a father, it is my duty to point out really stupid shit, so they can avoid becoming goony hipster douche balloons. So boys, this Fisk was written for you.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/02/fashion/mens-style/27-ways-to-be-a-modern-man.html

As usual, the original is italics and my comments are in bold.

SELF-HELP

Even the header is wrong. This article is the opposite of self-help. This is like the instruction guide for how to live life as a sex-free eunuch.  

27 Ways to Be a Modern Man

Alternate Title: Does the Touch of a Woman Confuse and Frighten You? 27 Ways to Avoid Girl Cooties.

By BRIAN LOMBARDI
 
Who took time off from his busy schedule at the nail salon to write this.
 
SEPTEMBER 29, 2015

Being a modern man today is no different than it was a century ago. It’s all about adhering to principle. Sure, fashion, technology and architecture change over time, as do standards of etiquette, not to mention ways of carrying oneself in the public sphere. But the modern man will take the bits from the past that strike him as relevant and blend them with the stuff of today.

My sons, as you go through life you will learn that libprog rags like the NYT, Slate, and HuffPo usually start their bullshit articles with a paragraph that sounds all sorts of reasonable. Beware. It is a trick.

What follows is one dude’s bizarrely specific pronouncements, which range from preachy but passable, to full turnip. Now, if this jackass had just lived his life according to his own code, real men wouldn’t give a shit, but of course not… This is the New York Times, bastion of bullshit, which will not be content unless it is telling you how you’re living your life wrong.  

  1. When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.

Who the hell buys shoes for their wife? As you grow older you will learn that many women like to shop for clothing and shoes. No. I don’t understand it either. But as a manly man, your duty is to work and provide money to your woman, so that she may go and do this sort of thing if she wants.

 As for knowing sizes, no. As children, your mother buys clothes for you. Right now your requests for her seem to be “Get a shirt with Deadpool on it” and that is good. But as men large of stature you will eventually purchase your own clothing from the Extra Large Casual Male Outlet or the Cabella’s Catalog.

For you who are descended from giants, you know man sizes starts at 2XL (or 3X if you need to carry your pistol concealed under an untucked shirt) and shoes sizes begin at 15, but unlike the wimpy New York Times reporter, manly men understand that all men are different, and we do not judge them, even if they shop in the children’s section.

As for knowing your woman’s sizes, no. Your mother owns like 40 pairs of running shoes. She doesn’t even know which brands run big or small, and she has a uterus.

  1. The modern man never lets other people know when his confidence has sunk. He acts as if everything is going swimmingly until it is.

This sounds like good advice, boys, but it is trickery.  A real man assesses his situation and does what is best. A real man must know when to ask for help. You have had the opportunity to grow up around warriors, and some of them have experienced terrible things. Even these great men need help at times. Hiding depression leads to things like suck starting your 12 gauge.

  1. The modern man is considerate. At the movie theater, he won’t munch down a mouthful of popcorn during a quiet moment. He waits for some ruckus.

Or you could just close your stupid face hole as you chew your food, you slack jawed idiot.

And by “ruckus” I’m guessing he wasn’t watching something like The Expendables, but rather he’s talking about the song and dance numbers on Mama Mia.

  1. The modern man doesn’t cut the fatty or charred bits off his fillet. Every bite of steak is a privilege, and it all goes down the hatch.

A real man lets other men eat what they want and isn’t a self-righteous prick about it.

But this talk of steak is just more trickery, sons. This is a Pajama Boy trying too hard to sound like a man, because steak is considered a manly food. Note that he spells filet wrong. That piece of meat isn’t fatty, and what kind of doofus burns a good piece of meat?

  1. The modern man won’t blow 10 minutes of his life looking for the best parking spot. He finds a reasonable one and puts his car between the lines.

Again, a real man doesn’t care what other men do as long as it doesn’t infringe upon him.

In real life, park wherever you feel like. You will either spend time looking for a close space, or you will spend time walking from a far one. That is your decision to make.

  1. Before the modern man heads off to bed, he makes sure his spouse’s phone and his kids’ electronic devices are charging for the night.

No. That is their problem. If you fail to plug your crap in, and you run out of power tomorrow, then you’ll learn. If your father comes and bails you out every time you make a stupid little mistake, then you will never become accountable for your actions, and then you will grow up and make foolish choices, like becoming a New York Times reporter.

  1. The modern man buys only regular colas, like Coke or Dr Pepper. If you walk into his house looking for a Mountain Dew, he’ll show you the door.

Look, boys, nobody likes a bossy asshole. I like Coke the best, but since I’m not a pretentious dickweed, I don’t presume to speak for other men. The thing about “taste” is that it is subjective, and so can’t be wrong.  

Besides, do you know what manner of man drinks Mountain Dew? Coal miners and Boyd Crowder. Men like your uncle Jack, who can bench press like 400 pounds because he pulls industrial electrical cables at construction sites all day, drink Mountain Dew. Do you truly believe that this effeminate, limp wristed, debutante could “show them the door”?  

Also, Dr Pepper isn’t even a cola, idiot.  

  1. The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,” not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton.

Yet “GET TO THE CHOPPA!” will always remain a thousand times cooler than anything this Pajama Boy ever says.

I am a bestselling novelist. Words are my profession. So I really hate the Word Police. Beware anyone who tells you what words you can, and can’t use. They only want to control you. That said, when you see somebody using the word “gauche” they’ll usually prove to be a pretentious dipshit.   

  1. Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day.

I have daughters as well. I actually agree with this one.

Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll fuck it up somehow.

  1. The modern man makes sure the dishes on the rack have dried completely before putting them away.

Can’t the “modern man” afford a dishwasher?

Boys, as you are aware every family will have a division of labor known as chores. You will take your assignment and fulfill it to the best of your ability. Doing a half ass job is unacceptable. This Pajama Boy is bragging about merely not doing a half ass job. It is sad that he is so proud of this minor achievement that he felt the need to put it on this list.  

  1. The modern man has never “pinned” a tweet, and he never will.

I do not know what these words mean.

However, because each generation is more technologically savvy than the one that came before, I’m not going to presume to tell anyone else what they can and can’t do. That is naïve. That would be like your grandfather telling me not to “internets” or his father telling him that color TV is a fad.

  1. The modern man checks the status of his Irish Spring bar before jumping in for a wash. Too small, it gets swapped out.

And Real Men have more important things to do than worry about how another man bathes himself.

I don’t care if you take all the little bits of soap and smoosh them together into a ball of mutant soap. I don’t even know what brand soap we have, because your mother buys it. The only time a real man cares about the bathing habits of another man, is if he smells bad, because then his stink is now intruding on your turf. Then you will inform him to get his shit together.

Besides, I’m betting this New York Times reporter smells of lilacs… and shame.

  1. The modern man listens to Wu-Tang at least once a week.

Who is she?

Okay, seriously, yes, I do know who Wu-Tang Clan is, but only because of the Dave Chappelle Show.

Here’s the thing. In grown up life, nobody gives a flying fuck what you listen to, and only pretentious cock nozzles feel the need to judge others based upon their tastes. He could have changed that to Frank Sinatra, Pearl Jam, or Garth Brooks, and it would be just as pointless. Being a fan of something doesn’t make you inherently better than someone else. That’s hipster nonsense.  

  1. The modern man still jots down his grocery list on a piece of scratch paper. The market is no place for his face to be buried in the phone.

Who cares?

No, really. You write it on a piece of paper, put it on your phone, scribble it on your hand with Sharpie, fly by the seat of your pants buying whatever you feel like, or your wife does the shopping… NOBODY GIVES A FUCK.

You sensing a trend yet, boys?

This guy is a symptom of a much bigger problem. People like to make themselves feel more important by telling other people that they are having Wrongfun. Judging others makes them feel special.

  1. The modern man has hardwood flooring. His children can detect his mood from the stamp of his Kenneth Cole oxfords.

Most real men have whatever flooring their wife wanted when they built their house, because we don’t care, because we’re working all day so don’t get to stand on it much. Or they have whatever flooring came with the house when they moved in, and eventually when they can afford to they’ll put in whatever flooring their wife wants, because they don’t care. Some men do care, and they can put in whatever floor they feel like. Good for them.

All of those men think this reporter is a douche.

I don’t even know what a Kenneth Cole is. I’m not sure what an oxford is, but from the context I believe it is a type of shoe. As a man who usually wears size 15 Danner boots, this is my Not Impressed Face.

  1. The modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off, so that his wife has a chance to get away.

This one sounds good, but as we go down the list you’ll see the reporter is completely full of shit again. His ability to fight off an intruder is as questionable as his understanding of manhood.

Plus, kids, your mom isn’t going to “get away” she’s going to go for her gun too.

  1. Does the modern man have a melon baller? What do you think? How else would the cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew he serves be so uniformly shaped?

I’m picturing an Army Special Forces A-Team, somewhere in Afghanistan right now, questioning their manhood because of their complete lack of melon ballers.

My sons, when you grow up, if you want to uniformly shape cantaloupes, I will not judge you, but I will profoundly wonder where I went wrong.

  1. The modern man has thought seriously about buying a shoehorn.

Hell, I’m surprised this fucker didn’t say what brand of shoehorn was mandatory!

  1. The modern man buys fresh flowers more to surprise his wife than to say he is sorry.

Boys, this is actually good advice. So I think we’re at 2 for 19. But since you both understand sports, you can see that he’s not doing well.

  1. On occasion, the modern man is the little spoon. Some nights, when he is feeling down or vulnerable, he needs an emotional and physical shield.

See? That’s the kind of bullshit that you just never need to know about another dude! This is just as bad as pontificating on what somebody else does in the shower.

But hang on. Isn’t this the same inconsistent twit who wrote #2?

Fuck it. Real talk time, boys. Women don’t respect pansies. Those who say they do are lying, and once they marry their sensitive little Pajama Boy, they will dream about actual manly men, who take care of business rather than fretting about melon ballers.

  1. The modern man doesn’t scold his daughter when she sneezes while eating an apple doughnut, even if the pieces fly everywhere.

That is so insanely specific… What is this, Leviticus? But if thy daughter doth sneeze while eating a maple bar, though shall beat her with a rod!

  1. The modern man still ambles half-naked down his driveway each morning to scoop up a crisp newspaper.

My kids were all like, what’s a newspaper?

That’s just wishful thinking on the New York Times part there.

Apparently, modern men can't read graphs either. It is even worse, because after the date this cut off the fall has accelerated.
Apparently, modern men can’t read graphs either.

 

And next, half-naked? Which half? Are the neighbors going “Damn it, there’s that Lombardi asshole without his pants again!”

  1. The modern man has all of Michael Mann’s films on Blu-ray (or whatever the highest quality thing is at the time).

I call bullshit on this one. This is a Pajama Boy trying too hard. The only thing he has on Blu-Ray is the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

I like Michael Mann movies. I’m trying to think of a Michael Mann main character who wouldn’t call this reporter a pussy to his face. I’m trying to imagine this reporter’s favorite scene from Heat:

Kilmer - "Can we hurry this up? I've got to go shoe shopping for my wife before my Pilates class!"
Kilmer – “Can we hurry this up? I’ve got to go shoe shopping for my wife before my Pilates class!”

 

 

DeNiro – “A guy told me one time, Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner. Now, if you’re on me and you gotta move when I move, how do you expect to keep your melon baller?”

Pacino – “Are those Kenneth Coal oxfords, McCauly? Because they look fabulous!

 

  1. The modern man doesn’t get hung up on his phone’s battery percentage. If it needs to run flat, so be it.

You are out of batteries because you were plugging in your kid’s shit in #6, you inconsistent spaz!

Now kids, listen carefully. If you’ve got a friggin’ clue, you know that a phone is just another tool, and if you’re going to carry the stupid thing around, you might as well have it charged, that way if you need it to call 911 after you see this Pajama Boy get beaten up for insulting Mountain Dew drinkers you’re ready.

  1. The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.

This is probably the stupidest one in the whole bunch.

You have no use for the gun? What about in #16? Oh, that’s right. We’re dealing with a chickenshit talking out of his ass about a subject he doesn’t even begin to comprehend.  

So, you’re going to fight off that intruder with what? Your shoe horn? Clue time, fuckwit, the kind of guy (let’s call him T-Bone) who invades your house in the middle of the night doesn’t give a shit about melon ballers. Uh oh! T-Bone drinks Mountain Dew. SHOW HIM THE DOOR. Only he spent time in prison learning how to fuck people up, and his idea of winning at Modern Manhood is being a pitcher rather than a catcher in the prison showers. What are you going to do to defend your wife and children now? Talk to him about your shared love for Wu-Tang? Show him your Kenneth Cole oxford collection?

No. T-Bone is going to hurt you in ways you can’t even imagine, and then you’re going to lie on your hardwood floor, bleeding, praying that your wife got to the phone in time so that a Real Men with guns might come and save your pathetic hipster ass.

Boys, the single most important responsibility of a man is to provide for the safety and well-being of his loved ones. Period. The gun is simply the single most effective tool to stop a violent aggressor. Real men understand that. Which is why I’ve also taught you, your sisters, and your mom to shoot, so if I go down, you still have a chance.

This bullshit modern man is a selfish, irresponsible child, banking on good intentions and wishful thinking to ward off evil. Only real evil simply does not give a shit about your good intentions.  

  1. The modern man cries. He cries often.

I’d cry too if T-Bone murdered my family because I was a useless sack of crap.

But wait… #2 is pretend everything is okay, but #26 is cry like a big baby.

To my sons, I’m not going to feed you a bunch of nonsense about how real men never cry, because I’ve seen some bad asses cry. But damn it, I try to save it for a good reason, like somebody died, or one of you did something that I’m ridiculously proud of. You’re overcome in a particularly spiritual or emotional moment, and you tear up? Great. I’ve known men far better than I who do that.

All that said, if you cry all the time like this doofus, then you’ll be seen as a loser, and if you’re lucky enough to trick a woman into marrying you, she will eventually cheat on you with the mail man, because at least he isn’t a wimp.  Women don’t desire men who cry freely about wanting to be the little spoon.

  1. People aren’t sure if the modern man is a good dancer or not. That is, until the D.J. plays his jam and he goes out there and puts on a clinic.

How much you want to bet his jam is really “It’s Raining Men”?  

##

If this is modern manhood, then I’m proud to be an old fashioned man.

 

UPDATE! Modern Manhood Achieved! I got a melon baller!   https://monsterhunternation.com/2015/10/06/update-modern-manhood-achieved/

 

 

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564 thoughts on “Fisking the New York Times’ Modern Man”

    1. There’s even a high-tech method to insure you don’t burn your meat—it’s called an immersion circulator or a sous-vide device, and you take your vacuum-sealed piece of meat and put it in a water bath that your device keeps at a precise temperature for hours. Then you take it out and sear it off and you’ve got a perfectly rare piece of meat.

      It takes less skill than, say, a grill, but oh that tri-tip is good eating.

        1. It’s the result of watching Food Network too much. And having a hood on the stove that is essentially inoperable (stupid thing is a combo single unit that we can’t currently afford to replace.)

          And I can’t be a Modern Man. I don’t have the equipment. :p

        2. More to the point, though, it’s TECH. “It’s not a proper job unless you need a new tool to finish it,” sometimes applies to food, too.

    2. Meh. I prefer beef rare, but I do not judge anyone for preferring the other tastes and textures that result from longer cooking times. The Romans had this one right: de gustibus non est disputandum. And I think they knew something about manhood.

      1. I. A man wealthy enough to ensure that shoes would fit someone who isn’t present is wealthy enough to have a slave do it for him.
        II A man is schooled in Rhetoric, so that he may convey the impression he wishes.
        III At the circus it will be harder to hear the words from the cheap seats anyway.
        IV de gustibus non est disputandum
        V A man wealthy enough to ride a horse through Rome has the entourage to take care of it while he conducts his business.
        VI A man punishes those who do not do their work, he doesn’t do their work for them.
        VII What use does a Roman have for barbarian tastes and drinks when there is garum and wine?
        VIII Castratus is the correct Latin for what this Blennus terms modern man.
        IX A daughter is called by the name of her father’s clan.
        X Does anyone want to read the whole essay on Roman household and labor practices? Suffice to say that this also does not apply to a Roman man of any great means.
        XI There are certain customs in the forum.
        XII There are also bath house customs. We all know that Rome colonized Ireland because they wanted a good source for bath oils.
        XIII A passion for a specific actress does not make a hero. Yes, that puppy is counted as an example of Latin literature.
        XIV So a literate wealthy Roman man writes down ephemeral trivia because he is too much of an imbecile to remember for himself, and too poor to have a slave go do it?
        XV A Roman man lives in a house fitting his station, in accordance with the ways of the ancestors.
        XVI Friends come through the gate; enemies come over the wall. A man sees that his enemies are killed. Romulus executed his own blood and milk brother Remus for as much.
        XVII Work for a woman or a slave.
        XVIII A shoehorn does not help one tie sandals on.
        XIX A man’s wife is beneath his hand. The law and custom are very well established.
        XX Men fit for positions of leadership are not receptive.
        XXI A paterfamilias can legally strangle his children.
        XXII If a man is wealthy enough to have someone write down such things, he is wealthy enough to have a slave carry it around and read it for him.
        XXIII A man being wealthy enough to own copies of heroic legends has nothing to do with the man having heroic qualities.
        XXIV A man stays awake for the watch he is set.
        XXV A sword is not a killer, it is a tool in a killer’s hands.
        XXVI The Stoics essentially say that if you restrain yourself from tears, you can learn not to be sad. Do not do what Regulus did not do.
        XXVII Barbarian dances are not appropriate for a Roman man to perform.

        1. alt XXV- A man takes his obligations as a Citizen of the Republic seriously, and is not found wanting in arms or skill when the Legions form.

          1. Few know more than I the flaws of what I did. This is a great alternative or addition, that is much better than some of my other answers.

          1. You have both my permission and my appreciation for the complement.

            I very much enjoyed your take on it. I may email you, as I had problems in the past registering on your site and gave up.

          2. You have my permission and my gratitude for the complement.

            I appreciate yours. I may email you, rather than try again to register on your site.

        2. Sniff, sniff.

          That is the most inspiring expression of manliness I have seen in a long time. I am weeping tears of exultation, that America may be saved yet.

  1. Thank you, sir, for fisking this idiot. It’s too bad that, should he ever read this, he will burst into tears rather than consider the fact that he is indeed a pussy.

  2. I have said it before, but regarding 26, the times it is appropriate for a man to cry are:
    A. Death of a loved one
    B. Winning Olympic medal
    C. End of Field of Dreams (Hey Dad, you wanna have a catch?)
    I’ll stipulate to inordinate pride in children. Not having any, I can’t comment on it.

      1. F) We Were Soldiers when Mrs. Moore starts delivering death notifications to the wives in her husband’s Cav unit.

        Mrs. Moore would probably club pajama boy like a baby seal and tell him to report to the nearest surgeon for an “add-a-pair-to-me”. And she’d probably do it from her rest home wheelchair.

        1. Yep. Gets me every time. Especially since, as an American Legion Chaplain, I conduct many of these funerals…

    1. I accept these reasons but there are others that are still within the manly man code. Being a strong female who has to constantly resist the urge to throat punch namby pamby metrosexual douchcanoes, I would think no less of a man who cried upon the death of a parent or child, or shed a tear or two at his wedding when the love of his heart came down the aisle. There are some majorly emotional moments in life where only the most sociopathic or damaged human would not at least tear up. In fact, I have seen my manly man tear up exactly 3 times and I love him even more for letting that little bit of emotion show. But hint: None of the three instances was because he missed out on the Black Friday sale at Barneys.

        1. On the other hand, “Brian Lombardi” is likely to get the same response Starlord got from the goon at the start of the movie: “Who?”

          1. My wife pulls that one on me every damn time and I fall for it too. My son or grandkids come out and say, “I’m Starlord,” or “I’ve got Starlord”. Then she will say ‘who?’ and I will repeat ‘Starlord’ like an idiot.

      1. But hint: None of the three instances was because he missed out on the Black Friday sale at Barneys.

        Noooooooooooooooooooooooo-wait, the what at what? 😉

    2. I can think of at least one more. Anyone who doesn’t tear up when listening to the classical arrangement of FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN should be buried; they’re dead.

    3. Mike said:

      “C. End of Field of Dreams (Hey Dad, you wanna have a catch?)”

      That one’s good but for me the movie ending with the best tear jerker moment is from 1971:

      “Now you honor me by giving me this award. But I say to you here now Brian Piccolo is the man who deserves the George S. Halas award. It is mine tonight… and Brian Piccolo’s tomorrow. ”

    4. I’d suggest we apply Larry’s advice here from some of the other items. It’s hard to say what will have the emotional impact to make someone cry, so I suggest we not catalog them all.

      How many times have you seen a Facebook post or a blog post contain the words, “it’s dusty in here”? In other words, the poster shed a tear or two, and is paying lip service to the notion that he shouldn’t have.

      I shed a brief tear or two when Neil Armstrong died. I think that’s as good a reason as a sad scene at the end of a movie.

    5. No, only if your children win the Olympic medal.

      This is the officially licensed manly crying movies list:
      1. Field of Dreams
      2. Braveheart
      3. any WW2 movie (Band of Bros, Saving Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers, etc)
      4. Second-hand Lions
      5. Old Yeller

      1. I’m surprised that those commenting on a science fiction writer’s blog don’t appear to have mentioned, in the course of two weeks, this movie scene as tear-worthy. Hint, I checked to see if anyone else had mentioned it by using Ctrl-F to search for “Khan.”

  3. Yeah… one of the foundational rules for being a man is something along the lines of “I don’t care what anyone says or thinks about me, or even their opinion on anything else, unless I GIVE them that right.”

    Wife? I care what she thinks.
    Mentor who has helped me for years? I care.
    Random Hipster Dude? Keep on steppin oxford man.
    Troll on the internet? Don’t make me laugh.
    My religious leader? Yeah. Assuming it is about something religious. Probably still don’t care about his taste in music or books.

  4. I’m actually glad hipster dude wrote the original article, just so I could get a good laugh out of the Fisk

    1. Hipster wrote it because he had to, the way the little tree frogs imitate the big guys who won’t let them into the pond. Alas.

  5. I want my not-quite-ten-year-old daughter to marry one of your sons. Don’t even care which one – Epic Toddler is a tad young for her, but she’ll enjoy being a cougar, and she already laughs at his mom’s stories. I fear that by the time my daughter grows to adulthood, all of the men she meets will be lumbersexual, man-bunned, pajama boys in over priced Kenneth Cole oxfords, and how in the heck is a loser like that going to keep her in jalapenos and ammo?

    1. There are real men still out there. And most of them are raising their boys to be real men as well. She may have to look but they’ll be there (and usually running like crazy from the feminists so they’ll probably be available.)

      1. We really want some kind of modern day Almack where the children who’ve been raised to eschew namby pamby metrosexual douchecanoes and their self-absorbed cluess slattern sisters can meet and socialize with prospective spouses.

        1. I suggest firearms training. People who go to training have common interests, they’re often there to learn how to defend others as well as themselves, and they’re humble enough to accept they -don’t- know it all. (Unlike some of the guys you meet at the open range.) And they don’t wet themselves when they hear a loud noise.

      2. My wife watched an old episode of “The Rifleman” the other day. She said in the 21st century, Lucas McCain would probably be put in prison for a combination of negligence and child abuse.

        Odd how rapidly cultural norms (appear to have) shifted…

        1. I watched the Rifleman with my Dad who commented he didn’t understand how McCain was able to hit a blessed thing with the barrel jerking around like that.

      3. There are plenty of real men still out here. They are too busy raising and providing for their families to whine about what the “modern man” should be. They are out there actually being real men, unlike this NYT writer.

    2. Don’t worry. I have several nephews. We can work out an arrangement, lol. We are hardy stock. Even my niece plays safety for her middle school football team.

  6. “25 The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.”

    “This is probably the stupidest one in the whole bunch. “

    Not “probably.”
    “Is.”
    Just “is.”

    1. I would modify the rule to: He owns a firearm, regularly practices and is safe with it, or has a damned good reason to not own one.

    2. While I don’t think this is what the original author of the “27 ways to be a whiny pussy” article meant it this way, I just have to say I’m reminded of the line from Quiggly Down Under:

      “Said I never had much use for one [a handgun]. Didn’t say I didn’t know how to use it.”

  7. I knew I would laugh if I followed your blog, Larry. I laughed so hard I had to read this again to my husband. 🙂

  8. The NYT article looks like it’s mocking current culture. Your Fisk looks like you’re satirizing mockery. And thus the world became meta.

    1. Phone battery running low? Damn the torpedoes. I am made of sterner stuff. Alexander conquered Persia with a low battery and almost no reception.

    2. Sorry, but NYT doesn’t deal in self-mockery. They mock others as a sign of disrespect for those with whom they fundamentally disagree. Alas.

  9. Lovely. I think the Leviticus joke was the best.

    However, on #16, I’m not sure how the wife is supposed to escape through the same door the intruder is currently standing in front of. He’s saying I have to wrestle the man out of the way so she has a clear shot out of the room? Otherwise, the only escape is out the window and a 15′ drop to the pavement.

    And he’s showing his oppressive patriarchy in #9. How dare he assign some arbitrary gender to his offspring? 😉

    1. Of course, a Real Man sleeps at the edge of the bed, at his wife’s feet, because you don’t know if the intruder will be coming in through the door, or through the window.

      And heaven help the Real Man who sleeps in a room with windows on two different walls, and doors on two other walls!

    1. Yep, though I didn’t drive a car with a stick until college. I drove lots of tractors before that though. 🙂

      1. Amen, Larry. Drive a stick, change a flat, and jump a car. But don’t touch the thermostat (because Dad said).

          1. Fiat, HOW did you fit in a Fiat? The driver’s seat must have been removed so you could sit in the back.

            Larry Correia – Turning a four seat car into a three seat car….

    2. We taught all of our kids how to drive a standard even though the only one we ever owned is my ’59 Apache (inherited from my Dad). My elder son is now an officer with a major city police force and he jokes that the best car security system is to have a standard transmission. A while back they had a scene with an abandoned car with a standard and keys in the ignition blocking a major intersection and the first three officers on the scene, including a sergeant, couldn’t move it. My son and his partner pull up, he climbs in and moves it over to wait for the tow. As everyone stands around looking silly, my son just said “Really?”

      1. I can drive stick, but I haven’t done so since 1999, and it wasn’t an everyday thing even then. Times change. I have been in one car with a three-in-a-tree shifter, and it was ancient at then. I don’t know how to drive one. I’ve also never learned to hand-cut a hardback book, or drive a mule team. A man learns to use the tools he has need to use. Manuals transmissions are a funny case because they haven’t gone away as rapidly as other stuff, because there are a few situations where they may be more suitable.

        If I owned a manual car, particularly something fast and twitchy, I’d be deathly afraid to let someone valet park it.

        1. 3 on the tree, 4 (or more) on the floor or 1 down/4 (or more) up, in the case of my motorcycles. Manuals are easy and much more fun than autos.

      1. You want a good laugh – look for the Wu Tang song “Shame on a Nigga” made into a “My Little Pony” music video…. Probably the best lip sync I’ve ever seen on a video made to found footage.

      1. Well, in one of Chappelle’s most funny skits he is in A clan. I couldn’t say WHICH clan he is in, but it isn’t the WuTang Clan.

  10. I think the Pajama Boy author of this article needs to wring his maxi-pad out. It reeks of the girls gym and estrogen. Yick.

  11. Thanks for that! I have been hoping to see that since yesterday. I do believe that they call that a “Mic drop”.

  12. I want to view this as some intricate satire so that I can still think that the author might have meant to inspire laughter in his audience.

    I just can’t. This list is such an odd assortment of finicky ‘advice’ that I have to assume he pretty much just wrote things that applied only to him and somehow convinced himself it was publish-worthy.

    1. There’s a hipster irony component, a bit of a meta-joke in the first part regarding gender roles and like for those who have taken classes in semiotics and literature deconstruction.

  13. Re #8: A real man doesn’t even know WTF gauche is. Is that like some kind of French goose-shit cracker spread or something?

    “Besides, I’m betting this New York Times reporter smells of lilacs… and shame.”
    Funniest thing ever said.

    1. I wasn’t sure what a melon baller was. I just assumed it was something designed to help take the core out of an avocado or similar annoyingly-cored fruit.

        1. I’ve never actually seen someone take the time to make melon bits into perfect spheres.

          Usually I just cut them up.

      1. A melon baller is something you buy at a Pampered Chef home party, put in a drawer and forget about.

        But don’t feel bad… I had no living clue what “the little spoon” was.

      2. Well, yes that is the sort of thing they are good for, though avacados aren’t really a good example. You whack those with a knife and twist.

    2. My wife used the word “gauche” a few times. From context I think it means “whatever that other woman is wearing.”

      1. Hm.

        Depends how much specific pride is taken in that extensive vocabulary….and whether the man is capable of successfully judging the room when using it.

        Otherwise he’s just another pretentious twot.

      2. I don’t think I know anyone who uses that word unironically. I sometimes hear “how gauche” when the intent is to mock the sort of person who wrote this thing in the first place. That probably accounts for 90% of the time I hear it. In the other 10%, it’s in the context of main-gauche, the left-hand knife, used in two-weapon dueling. Since the word originates with the French for left, it seems like the NYT ought to be more in favor of it :-).

  14. This cupcake Lombardi forgot one: #28: The Modern Man never has to hear his wife complain about him leaving the seat up because he pees sitting down.

    1. It’s a moot point. The LID stays down to keep pets out, things from falling in, and to slow down inquisitive toddlers. Also to keep germs from spraying all over when you flush. Besides, WHY do people think that looks good? Even chamber pots used to have lids.

  15. Damn.

    A real man lets other men eat what they want and isn’t a self-righteous prick about it.

    Reminds me of the Pournelle anecdote where Niven (IIRC) was asked about “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” and Niven responded “Real men eat whatever they damn well please”

    Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day.
    I have daughters as well. I actually agree with this one.

    I’d say it’s a factor of having kids, period. But hey, Pajama boy has to show he’s all grrrrrrllll power.

    1. My 11 y/o daughter would consider this guy to be a sissy. Only because she isn’t old enough to call him a pussy.

    2. “Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person.”

      The thing that annoys me about this statement, is that people generally don’t get a choice in whether they get sons or daughters. Since I have both, I know that having sons is different from having daughters…but I also know of people who have all sons, and all daughters. Are the former permanently banned from Real Manhood because the genetic lottery came out the way it did? I somehow doubt it…

  16. I think that the entire article was written to justify including #25 (gun control) for propaganda purposes.

    1. Nah, it’s just signalling. The guy is writing in the *New York Times*, most of his core audience already thinks guns are icky.

      1. Indeed. He probably would have evoked howls of protest had he left it out.

        Frankly, I’m surprised that he didn’t suggest that a real man isn’t afraid to admit he has a female soul, dress up in drag and get hormone therapy.

  17. I like his answer to 17. Basically comes out as My sons, when you grow up, if you want to uniformly shape cantaloupes, I will not judge you, but I will judge myself”.

    1. Well, if they get into cooking, or into Thai cooking… but that’s not really melon baller stuff. That’s serious knife work, and knife skills are always a good thing, as is a really well made Tom Yam soup.

      1. I was a little puzzled by Larry’s response here. Is he down on men learning to cook, or he is criticizing the sort of cookery in which you artfully arrange spheres of melon as overly froo-froo? I saw Larry’s posts about feeding the kids while Mom was away, and I was trying to decide if he was exaggerating his kitchen incompetence for humor’s sake or if it really was a face-palm moment. Iv’e never once thought that I really need to cut mellons into little spheres, but men should know how to cook.

        Acquiring kitchen knives, keep good edges on them, and learning good, safe, fast, knife skills have lots of parallels to gun nuttery.

        1. I’m actually a pretty good cook.

          Artfully arranging spheres of melon as a mark of manhood? You decide. 😀

          1. Well when you put it that way 🙂

            OTOH, I can easily imagine Ayn Rand making it out to be a manly virtue, by making it into competence porn.

            “Howard Roarke, unwilling to compromise his values took a job in a hotel restaurant. There he made fruit baskets with uncompromising attention to detail, every sphere of melon expertly carved by his sure, deft, hand with a melon baler, and arranged with a precision that few would ever appreciate.”

          2. Do farmers use melon balers? I have kids, so two or three bales of melons would be handy. 😉

  18. I have serious doubts about the supposed manliness of the ‘modern man’ portrayed in the original list. Hell, I’m not sure I know of any WOMEN who would consider this a list to follow, so I am quite baffled as to who considers this proper behavior.

    In no particular order…
    1) My husband knows better than to buy shoes for me, even if he knows my size. He’s not stupid.

    2)My kids know to keep their own devices charged. The boyo’s mp3 player may need a new battery however.

    3) We rarely go out to the movie theatre because it’s too expensive. The rental kiosk has 1$ weekly specials and we wait for those.

    4) The only person whose steak is ever ‘burned’ is Aff’s, and that’s because he likes them that way.

    5) I’m the one who drinks Mountain Dew and Coke. Rhys drinks things like Mother, bourbon colas, Dr. Pepper, and spiked juices.

    6) Local slang for Chinooks is “Chook”, but that’s Aussies for you.

    7) Boys or girls, we have no preference, they’re loved no matter what.

    8) We use soap gel, so I miss the mutant soap bar days; we used to have fun making weird shaped soap for my dad to puzzle over.

    9) as a family we have rather eclectic tastes in music, but it’s often shared tastes.

    10) I’m the one who makes the grocery list.

    11) Our daughter’s the one with the clompy boots. =3

    12) Before he goes to bed, Rhys makes sure the doors are locked, instead of ‘charging the devices of the kids’, because he has his priorities straight. BOTH of us will attack if there’s a home invader stupid enough to break in, and I’m the one who’s more paranoid about random night noises.

    13) The melon baller is mine, and Rhys knows better than to comment about my kitchen tools. He also knows that I prefer potted flowering plants as opposed to cut flowers; and chances are he’ll buy me a book for Valentines, or, as he did last time, chocolate covered cherries.

    14) I am always the little spoon, because I am a tiny thing.

    15) Rhys is a Marksman and he has a rifle. The pistol will be for me.

    1. #1? Really, if the wife comes in all proud and says “Look at this venison I bought, now you don’t have to go hunting”, would that make you happy?

    2. you sound like a healthy, well adjusted family! unlike the feather merchant who wrote the original article.

    3. “6) Local slang for Chinooks is “Chook”, but that’s Aussies for you.”

      I thought in Australia a chook was a chicken?

    4. It’s hard to be the little spoon when you’re 6′ and the Mrs. is 5’2″.

      I always envy men with tall wives for this reason. It’s fun being the little spoon once in a while.

      1. Speaking as an almost-6-foot woman…I wish more men felt like that. I’ve known far too many who get twitchy about me being as tall/taller… 😀

        1. Size doesn’t matter to me. I think confidence is what makes a person attractive. Genuine confidence, not the judgmental bravado that an insecure coward hides behind. (Finding an example is left as an exercise for the reader.)

        2. 1) Women are hot. Tall, short, who cares?

          2) As evidenced by the Fisk-ee, Pajama Boy, a large number of men these days are useless wankers. He seems like the type to get twitchy over a woman with height and biceps.

          3) Tall women are awesome because they can carry one end of the canoe on a portage during camping trips. ~:)

  19. “Now kids, listen carefully. If you’ve got a friggin’ clue, you know that a phone is just another tool, and if you’re going to carry the stupid thing around, you might as well have it charged, that way if you need it to call 911 after you see this Pajama Boy get beaten up for insulting Mountain Dew drinkers you’re ready. ”

    An uncharged cell phone is the only thing I can think of that might – MIGHT, mind you – be more useless than an unloaded gun.

    1. “An uncharged cell phone is the only thing I can think of that might – MIGHT, mind you – be more useless than an unloaded gun.”

      Nope. New York Times Reporter is top of that list.

    2. This is the one where I thought “Hmm, call 911? Screw that, I need to record it to show my wife later… After all, he did ask for it. Maybe he’ll get the hint to not insult Mountain Dew drinkers.”

    3. “An uncharged cell phone is the only thing I can think of that might – MIGHT, mind you – be more useless than an unloaded gun.”

      I’m old-fashioned enough that I carry a little old Nokia non-smartphone (well, it’s Symbian, but that’s the same thing these days) attached to a lanyard. If I was forced to defend myself, it would actually make a pretty effective ‘slung shot’.

    4. Depends on how much of it you have to take apart to get at the burnable components, now doesn’t it ^_^.

    5. Charged? Heck, I learned a lesson several months ago, about keeping your minutes charged (I have pay-as-you-go). I was waiting at a bus stop late that night, tired and wanting a ride to pick up my van from the shop, unable to send texts because I figured that I could recharge in another week or two and be fine.

      I bought minutes as soon as I got home, if I recall correctly, and I’ve been careful with my minutes since then.

  20. Having met you, now, and listened to you speak, I believe I can say with confidence that the risk of your sons turning into goony hipster douche balloons is approximately zero.

    Cannibalistic heavy-metal rednecks, on the other hand…

    1. If they don’t form a heavy metal band named Cabbage Point Killing Machine as teenagers, I’m going to be terribly disappointed.

  21. The answer to #25 is my favorite from a fisk ever! But, dude, I have a flared up hip and bending over in laughter like that fraking hurts. So worth it, though! 😀

    1. Can I get a tactical melon-baller from Cheaper Than Dirt? Or should I just fake it with my Russian Ammo Can Opener?

      1. “tactical” just means “spray paint matte black and charge $20 more”. Oh, and a little skull decal if you are feeling festive. I’m sure you can retro-tac a melon-baller 😀

      2. Yes, but you’ve got to buy the one made by Kitchenaide, not Cuisinart. Cuisineart makes theirs from cheap plastic, and the KeyMod attachment rattles loose after a few shots.

      3. You people do all realize that the tactical kilt started out as a joke? I can just see tactical melon-ballers becoming a “thing” this Christmas.

        1. Troop: “What the hell do I need a melon baller for?”
          Smart Troop: “I can make you a tactical melon baller for another 30 bucks.”

        2. See now I have to go Google tactical kilt. If I dir laughing, I blame you…or maybe Larry… *chortle*

      4. Screw this “Tactical” nonsense…. tell me where I can find a STRATEGIC melon baller, and we’ll have something going on!

        1. The Air Force is already seeking funding for one. They will cost $100M each, and employ people in ten different congressional districts.

          But they won’t handle ain’t to ground better than the A-10, regardless.

        1. Titanium expands significantly with temperature, so titanium, strategic melon ballers have to be engineered to be somewhat smaller than acceptable melon ball size, so that they will expand to the correct size at high mach.

    2. Were Cookie Monster’s actions in Beirut why the Geneva Conventions now outlaw serrated-tooth melonballers?

  22. Dear Larry, I stole your last paragraph to #25. It so closely resembled Obama and his ilk. I just couldn’t resist.

  23. Speaking as a man who has used a melon baller before, don’t bother. If the cantaloupe/watermelon/honeydew is good, you’re wasting good melon. If the melon is bad enough that you don’t mind wasting half of it, you might as well eat something else.

    And if you’re such an obnoxious pedant that the melon /has/ to be divided equally, I recommend a juicer and a measuring cup.

  24. See, you did better than I would have. I just would have typed “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” until my fingers fell off. Unless he was in the room. Then there would be the sound of hands going upside heads.

    He is like those twats who tell you how to use Twitter or why HTML evil is wrong, or the phone you’re using is bad. Just shut the fuck up. Eat what you want. Use what you want. You don’t like mountain dew? great. You love it? great. Like guns? great. Don’t like guns? great.

    Just shut the fuck up about it. Let there be some aspect of your life that is a fucking mystery to people.

  25. “Boys, the single most important responsibility of a man is to provide for the safety and well-being of his loved ones. Period. The gun is simply the single most effective tool to stop a violent aggressor. Real men understand that. Which is why I’ve also taught you, your sisters, and your mom to shoot, so if I go down, you still have a chance.”

    This. This is what real women want from their men. If a woman doesn’t appreciate this about you, go find a real woman. We’re out there.

  26. Melon balling ain’t that big a deal. You just gotta cut a small starter hole in the rind unless you got really high blood pressure.

  27. Hot damn, that was the 50-gallon drum of whoopass that Larry opened. PajamaBoy is too tightly curled into a fetal position to even be able to spoon with T-Bone.

  28. I have purchased my wife shoes. I could do this because she wrote brand, style, model, color, and size on a piece of paper and I was able to hand it to a clerk and say, “this.” A real man is not afraid to ask his wife to make a list.

    1. I have to on occasion go into the craft shop when my wife’s legs are acting up and she can’t walk around to shop. I head straight to the customer service desk and say, “My wife has instructed me to say exactly the following…”

    2. In my experience, even if I know exactly what I want, I find it still a bad idea to send someone to get it: they usually return with something that isn’t quite what I wanted…

      Buying shoes, or even clothing, can be finicky; I don’t like shopping even for myself, because sometimes (even when I’m careful) I don’t get the size right! Shopping for someone else can make it even more difficult…

  29. That… was spectacular. Also, when are you going to write the book on the Many Reasons Why Real Men Won’t Tell You How To Be A Real Man (and the best ways to do it yourself)?

    It can have lots of interesting chapters like “Develop a sense of humor” because women prefer you to laugh about it when the children fling rocks through your widescreen television rather than murdering the little rats. Or maybe “Learn a few real-world skills” such as unloading a gun and rendering it safe, organizing tools in a garage or maybe even using the tools to change your oil or a tire. It could delve into legal issues in the modern world such as “How to be passionate and intense without triggering a restraining order” or “Being spontaneous within the realm of acceptable parameters of surprise and discomfort.” Heck, I might even read up on “Retaining space in your house: how to keep your favorite things safe from family.” Really, the sky is the limit.

  30. To Brian Lombardi:
    Kenneth Cole? Allen Edmonds, please. And they’ll give you the shoehorn.

    Also, I’ll keep my guns, thank you. I tend to buy my pants a size larger than I need so that I can always keep one handy.

  31. What the Hell do I care about the opinion of some metrosexual at the Neu Yawk Slimes? This 11Bravo makes his own style choices and has never bought his wife shoes.

  32. Thank you, Larry. I read the NYT link first and thought “This is so blessedly awful that I cannot see any reason for Larry to prison-rape it. But this was a fun read.

  33. Larry — thank you. I’d been intending to fisk this but hadn’t had the time, and I couldn’t have done near the job you did. I agree with you on all points, but one note:

    Oxfords are one of the traditional styles of dress shoe for wearing a suit; I like them in that circumstance as they have a timeless classic style to them (think Bogart — ie, a real man dressed nice). However, this guy’s oxfords are probably some “gauche” style and color that clash with his yoga pants.

    He is a simpering wuss, through and through, and comes across like an effete snob.

    Finally, Ed at 52 in 52 weeks did a counter-list: http://52in52weeks.com/27-other-ways-to-be-a-modern-man/ — this link not safe for weaklings.

    1. I wear my damned boots with my suit, not oxfords. Not my problem if that gets someone’s mellonballer in a twist.

      1. I wear the traditional footwear of my culture*- leather boat shoes with no socks. Fits in with our traditional former dress of shorts and one’s best tropical shirt.

        *Florida

      2. That works, too. I’m not the type to dictate to another man what to wear with a suit.

        Just wanted to clarify, since they are sort of a classic look (but again, I doubt the NYT wuss wears classic looking anything).

  34. The Times piece is suspiciously like a satire that might’ve run in The New Yorker in 1927, using subtle jabs to show what’s left of the modern emasculated male. Other than being a receptacle for femininity, the man’s sole connection to his past dominance is reduced to chin-out spur-of-the-moment parking decisions made with the nonchalance of not caring how far one needs to walk any more than Lewis and Clark did. This could’ve been written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

    1. Possibly, but wouldn’t it have been simultaneously more cutting and more direct? For example:

      The Modern Man prefers not to make decisions which can be held against him later. Deferring and deflecting decision making is a primary modern skill.

      The Modern Man understands when his significant other prefers to use a mechanical aid rather than to make love to them as it is more efficient and less messy.

      1. Not really. The bit about having a daughter making a man a more complete person is pretty clearly a satirical jab at feminist supremacy. Do you ever hear anyone saying having a son makes a woman a more complete person? It is presumed that would never be the case; women already are complete. This is Dagwood Bumstead stuff.

        1. “Do you ever hear anyone saying having a son makes a woman a more complete person?”

          Well, there was that one woman who wrote an article saying if she could do her life over she would abort her children and live more for herself.

          That’s about as close to motherly affection for boys as progs get.

  35. Most of these are simply pretentious twaddle from a coddled and self-absorbed hipster hoplophobe. And speaking of idiot hoplophobes(redundancy much?) #25 is such a magnificent piece of pathetic idiocy that I wonder how the author is capable of pulling his pants (no doubt very tight fitting, having no testicles helps prevent any pain and the lack of blood reaching the head is nullified by the lack of any receiving organ residing therein) on without assistance from a kind medical professional.

    Somebody breaks into my home with malice and/or murder in mind and there will be one story (mine), one body (his) and two Sig Sauer V-Crown hollow point .9 mm shells on the floor, each paired with a matching piece of lead embedded in the remnants of the idiot’s chest.

      1. Robert Parker’s Spenser used a 410 shotgun once, and Stuart Wood’s main character had a .762 handgun. James Patterson still believes you have a slide safety (that you flick off) on all Glocks. Craig Johnson did, in his first book, but he got better. Sort of.

        Solus is allowed one error. But his wiregun had better have explosive tips to have any stopping power, IMHO. 😀

        1. A .9mm projectile with a mass of 1 grain, traveling at a speed of 13,500 fps, would give a muzzle energy of about 405 ft-lbs, which is well within spec for 9x19mm muzzle energy. That’s only Mach 2.5+…. 😉

          Yeah, wiregun, but it shouldn’t need explosive tips at that muzzle velocity. I have no idea how much a .9mm round projectile would actually mass, but this gives us a ballpark idea of what the muzzle velocity would need to be for a round of that caliber to be useful.

  36. There’s something amusing about reading this fisking while listening to Elvis singing How Great Thou Art and The Impossible Dream. Impossible Dream in particular is funny because that is every bit of manhood this guy doesn’t have.

  37. This idiot article should be the definition of click bait. As pointed out, the NYT (like most newspapers) is bleeding readers and therefore, ad revenue. Posting this piece of crap is only meant to drive angry, real men (and the women who put up with us) to read it and therefore drive up clicks so their marketing department has at least one positive item to show in their pitch.

  38. This needs to be an audiobook.

    Larry, have you thought about publishing a collection of your Fisks? They’re as satisfying to read as your fight scenes.

  39. Regarding #15: If Putzley there is stamping around on his hardwood floors in his Kenneth Cole oxfords all the time, he obviously has some real anger issues. I’m sure his kids know full what kinds of moods he has . . . and are keeping their distance.

    “Uh-oh, Danny, Daddy’s in one of his *redrum* moods again. Better hide before he makes you TAKE YOUR MEDICINE.”

    Dude, this is like “The Shining,” but with little spoons and melon ballers. This might be the one coherent thing the guy’s written all week, besides 500 pages of “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play . . . ”

    Maybe somebody needs to call Child Protective Services in whatever his town of residence might be . . .

  40. I know Shadowdancer already did this her way, but as one of the founding members of Larry’s “Don’t Fuck With The Chicks That Read My Books Club”, here’s my take.

    1. When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.

    No. Dear lord, no. Never. I don’t even let him buy me socks.

    2. The modern man never lets other people know when his confidence has sunk. He acts as if everything is going swimmingly until it is.

    Which is shitty advice if your hubby has ever attempted any sort of home repair. My hubs is an engineer and a damn good handy man, but during every project, I keep my ears peeled for the loud “Oh, shit!!” That’s my cue to either go to Lowes or hand him the first aid kit.

    3. The modern man is considerate. At the movie theater, he won’t munch down a mouthful of popcorn during a quiet moment. He waits for some ruckus.

    Not sure who he is being considerate for because he’s obviously sitting alone. I’d slap my companion and tell him not to cram so much food in his mouth – I’m not missing a good part to give him the Heimlich.

    4. The modern man doesn’t cut the fatty or charred bits off his fillet. Every bite of steak is a privilege, and it all goes down the hatch.

    A real man isn’t going to let a steak burn, and knows that you trim off the fatty part (if there is any, depending on the cut, and if there is fat on your filet you are doing it wrong) to feed to the dog under the table.

    5. The modern man won’t blow 10 minutes of his life looking for the best parking spot. He finds a reasonable one and puts his car between the lines.

    Can’t really argue with this one as I am the same way. I’ll take a close one if it presents itself but I’m not wasting time cruising for one.

    6. Before the modern man heads off to bed, he makes sure his spouse’s phone and his kids’ electronic devices are charging for the night.

    What Larry said. If you don’t charge it, tough. That’s called a life lesson.

    7. The modern man buys only regular colas, like Coke or Dr Pepper. If you walk into his house looking for a Mountain Dew, he’ll show you the door.

    This one is probably included because Coke advertises in the NYT and he had some product placement sponsorship requirement to work in. I’d like to see him get after my former Marine sniper friend for drinking a Diet Coke.

    8. The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,” not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton.

    Southern people routinely abbreviate words ‘ cause we’ve got better things to do. Bless his heart. Again, I’d like to see him call my Marine sniper buddy with an ME degree from Auburn a gauche simpleton. Then the writer would be abbreviating words because it hurt to much to speak through a wired jaw.

    9. Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day.

    Not just learn but teach as well. That happens any time you parent. Welcome to reality, dumbass.

    10. The modern man makes sure the dishes on the rack have dried completely before putting them away.

    That is just an excuse for “leaving shit in the dish drainer for a week”.

    11. The modern man has never “pinned” a tweet, and he never will.

    One does not, to the best of my knowledge pin a tweet. One pins a Facebook post if one is a page admin. This *may* refer to a Pinterest thing but I don’t know for sure, as I have a job and a life and no extra time to scour the Internet for arts and crafts that would make my soul bleed.

    12. The modern man checks the status of his Irish Spring bar before jumping in for a wash. Too small, it gets swapped out.

    Waste not, want not. And Irish Spring makes me sneeze.

    13. The modern man listens to Wu-Tang at least once a week.

    Grounds for divorce. Unless he’s in the car by himself, and then I don’t give a shit what he listens to.

    14. The modern man still jots down his grocery list on a piece of scratch paper. The market is no place for his face to be buried in the phone.

    He had to use paper because his phone wasn’t charged because his wife and kids took up all the cords. Covering up his own in competencies.

    15. I’m not touching the flooring one. I’m guessing this guy couldn’t afford anything else other than whatever was already in his house because he lives on a NYT salary. What little money he has left over each month wouldn’t cover a pair of Kenneth Cole shoes., much less ones that would stamp across any floor.

    16. The modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off, so that his wife has a chance to get away.

    I sleep on the side of the bed closest to the door because that is My Side. Period. Plus, my shotgun – MY shotgun – fits better beside my bedside table.

    17. Does the modern man have a melon baller? What do you think? How else would the cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew he serves be so uniformly shaped?

    Dear lord. *I* don’t even have a melon baller. All the balls in my life are uniformly snapped naturally, thank you very much. This is where I began to suspect this was a satire piece but alas, I was wrong.

    18. The modern man has thought seriously about buying a shoehorn.

    This is where he realized he had promised 27 and only had 26.

    19. The modern man buys fresh flowers more to surprise his wife than to say he is sorry.

    He wins this one. I love flowers (never roses) for no good reason.

    20. On occasion, the modern man is the little spoon. Some nights, when he is feeling down or vulnerable, he needs an emotional and physical shield.

    My manly man is just 6 feet, so all our spoons are created equal. But we are both two hot natured to spoon much, so there’s just lots of side snuggles.

    21. The modern man doesn’t scold his daughter when she sneezes while eating an apple doughnut, even if the pieces fly everywhere.

    A sneeze is an involuntary action – who in their right mind would scold a child for a sneeze? Is someone in a confessing mood? We’ve pretty much determined he isn’t a real man by now. Picking boogers at the dinner table? Go for it.

    22. The modern man still ambles half-naked down his driveway each morning to scoop up a crisp newspaper.

    The obligatory suck up to the employer.

    23. The modern man has all of Michael Mann’s films on Blu-ray (or whatever the highest quality thing is at the time).

    Who needs this when you have On Demand and Netflix? Save your money for some Kenneth Cole shoes.

    24. The modern man doesn’t get hung up on his phone’s battery percentage. If it needs to run flat, so be it.

    Larry covered this one. So stupid.

    25. The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.

    This right here was the hidden agenda for the WHOLE PIECE, I’D BET ON IT!!!

    26. The modern man cries. He cries often.

    Over the death of a family member or close friend, yes. Because you missed the special at Sephora on moisturizer? No.

    27. People aren’t sure if the modern man is a good dancer or not. That is, until the D.J. plays his jam and he goes out there and puts on

    Let’s keep it a surprise, shall we? Douchebag.

    1. Just thinking about the “helicopter” vs. “chopper” thing… using jargon is a fine line to walk and when in doubt it’s always a good idea to use the proper name so you don’t sound like a dufus. Even if you use terms *correctly* you’re probably going to sound like a dufus if you aren’t a member of the group that “owns” the particular jargon. (ie, adults who try to use teenager slang.) This has nothing to do with being a modern man, or even a modern woman… it’s just… actually, it’s something that most people who aren’t dufuses instinctively understand.

      1. Yeah, I don’t refer to aircraft and satellites as “birds” because I’m not steeped in the community that uses that slang. “Chopper” has pretty much entered common usage though, so it’s not quite the same.

    2. Oh, and I feel you on #20… once I figured out what the ever living heck the “little spoon” was… you know how the military guys say it’s not gay if you’re sleeping in the field and it’s 20 below zero? This is how I feel about “spooning”. The rest of the time it’s all… omg, hot moist human get away… no really… I’ll put my foot on your calf and you can hold my hand and we’re good…

    3. Waste not, want not. And Irish Spring makes me sneeze.

      Ditto. How can people breathe with that “fresh scent” on them? Fresh scent of what? There’s nothing in nature that smells like that. I have Ivory in the shower and Lava at the sink. When a bar gets too small to use, I get out a fresh bar and lay the old one on top of it. Eventually they meld together into a single bar. Waste not, want not.

  41. Everyone knows #17 should be: One does not NEED a Melon baller, because one uses a Samurai sword or Sharp Knife of choice to CARVE his melons into uniform cubes.

    1. My feeling on this is that melon tastes exactly the same regardless of what shape it’s cut into, so I’m not going to waste a precious moment of my life prettifying the shit. I quarter it lengthwise and then carve it into slices, and anybody in my household who doesn’t like it doesn’t have to eat it.

      If the modern man does otherwise, the modern man has too much fucking time on his hands and/or needs a good punch in the throat.

      1. Also, spheres do not pack into the shape of melon meat without extra material. It is wasteful.

        I do sometimes eat half or a quarter of a watermelon, starting by tunneling in with a spoon.

  42. Being a woman, I cannot claim to be an expert on “what makes a man a man”. But I can with complete confidence state what I find to be a total turn off in a man, and I think this Modern Man just named pretty much all of my biggest turn offs.

  43. I hope I’m not the only one who when they got to number 17 they thought of this line from Scrubs “…and I’m trying to convince my mom that the thing in my suitcase is a giant electric melon-baller!”

  44. You smug lil’ whipper-snappers. Men only cry at movies like Field of Dreams, Band of Brothers, etc.?

    Two words: Old. Yeller.

  45. I’ve posted this in several locations where this drivel was being fisked, but it bears repeating;

    A Modern Man is a man of intelligence and discernment. As such, he realizes that the New York Times is a provincial hack-rag, and has been for some years …. possibly since the 1980 election. Not being an intellectual manqué, he has stopped reading the New York Times except as an indication of what a small inbred clique of manhattan rent-controled apartment dwellers think. This article is a strong indication that, in fact, they don’t.

  46. that ‘modern man’ is the kind of nancy that really doesn’t get down here to appalachia that much and when he does manage it, he spends most of his time looking at his shoes while other men speak.

  47. I like the alternate title, but how about an alternate article?
    *DO NOT TAKE THIS POST SERIOUSLY*

    —–
    Does the Touch of a Woman Confuse and Frighten You?
    7 Ways to Avoid Girl Cooties.

    1) Don’t show interest.
    If the woman shows interest, put it down *hard*. Like a biological weapon. Multiple nuclear detonations recommended.
    2) Avoid the necessities and wants of life.
    You really don’t need a new pair of pants anyway. Or that burnt steak.
    3) Hide under a rock like a hermit.
    Or your great-great-great grandparents.
    4) Lose the family jewels.
    In a duel. Or a wood-chipper. Pick one.
    5) Become a Darwin Award Winner. It only hurts once!
    And it will brighten everyone else’s day.
    6) Have a sick/disgusting sense of humour.
    *WARNING*: This may not always work. When in doubt, follow #7.
    7) Get acquainted with death.
    Read some Deadpool comics. Maybe try some of his methods?
    —–

    I’m lazy and didn’t feel like doing more.

    For those who are wondering, this is supposed to be sarcasm, but might actually be more useful for the stated goals than the original article.

  48. As much as I hate to give this guy any support, I’m actually with him on #5.

    People who drive around the lot looking for the best spot, or worse, the assholes who HOVER OVER spots waiting for somebody to pull out, are a menace that need to be purged from society. Preferably with fire.

    You’re right that a real man shouldn’t care what someone else does unless it infringes upon them. But the bastards that do this hold up everybody else in the parking lot, even when there’s DOZENS of spots just a little further out, which I would be happy to walk from, but can’t even reach because I can’t get around this one asshole waiting for a parking spot. That’s infringing upon me, in my book. Just take a damn spot, or move along.

    1. And if you happen to be in a lot where there aren’t any other spots? Or if the driver is a woman and it’s close to dark and all the other spots are a block away so she’d rather wait a couple minutes for someone to pull out than walk a block at night by herself? Before you get so judgey, maybe give other people the benefit of the doubt and consider that there may be perfectly good reasons for drivers to circle or wait for a closer spot.

      1. If there are no other spots, or the other spots are REALLY far away and/or in unsafe places, then that’s not what he was talking about. He specifically said that he hates “the bastards that do this hold up everybody else in the parking lot, even when there’s DOZENS of spots just a little further out.” (emphasis mine)

        You’re arguing against a point that he wasn’t making.

        1. ” the assholes who HOVER OVER spots waiting for somebody to pull out”

          This is more the part I was replying to. I agree that it’s generally unnecessary to wait for a spot if we’re talking about a difference of ten or fifteen feet, but he was painting with a little too broad a brush in my opinion. That’s not even considering the many other reasons someone might want a particular spot, like that they’re handicapped/old and even ten additional feet is an exertion they’d rather avoid, or that the vehicle they’re driving won’t fit as easily into those other spots… Really, there are all kinds of scenarios that one should have more patience for. Not all people waiting for a spot are simply douchebags. He made it sound as if he thought that any waiting for a spot at all was never even remotely okay.

  49. That absolutely nails the girly man who pretends to have thoughts about modern manhood. Well said, sir – and I agree with every word you wrote.

  50. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I read the original list and I wanted to throat-punch the author through the Internet.

  51. Started reading these to my wife to hear her reaction. After 10 she said “Stop, you’re going to make me throw up. This list should be how to turn a modern man into a women”.
    😀 So now you know what the other gender thinks of this list.

  52. You know, Larry, your boys are pretty young. When they’re older, they might not be interested in what women desire. They might even like “It’s Raining Men.” Just sayin’.

    1. Can’t tell on the younger one yet, but on the older one, that boy has been fixated on boobies since he could talk. 😀

  53. Saw this over at AoSHQ yesterday.

    So glad Larry put on his curb-stomp boots.

    “My sons, when you grow up, if you want to uniformly shape cantaloupes, I will not judge you, but I will profoundly wonder where I went wrong. ”

    Literally LOLed…

    Can we get the Mountain Who Writes a real paying job as “Media Fisker”?

    ‘Cause I think he’d kill that job.

  54. A quibble with #1.

    Audie Murphy was manly enough for everyone, and is credited (perhaps optimistically) to be 5′ 5″. I doubt he shopped at Big’n’Tall shops, unless to find pants to fit his brass clankers in.

    1. I thought that Larry was just saying that his own sons were tall and would grow up to do all their clothes shopping at Big and Tall stores, not that all real men have to be tall.

      1. My kids are already super tall. I can’t speak for others. But tallness isn’t a prerequisite for manhood, because I know some short bad asses. 🙂

  55. “That said, when you see somebody using the word “gauche” they’ll usually prove to be a pretentious dipshit. ”

    As a fellow writer, I can think of one exception. The word can be used without pretentiousness in a sentence like this: “I parried his rapier and locked blades with him so fiercely that the metal guards rang like bells against each other, and then, before he could react, I drove the six inch blade of my main gauche into his sternum: He grinned a sickly grin, muttered ‘touche’ and blood gushed from between his teeth.”

    I believe the word gauche can be used in that sentence unpretentiously.

  56. The modern man doesn’t charge up San Juan Hill. Rather, he walks, while good-naturedly calling out “I surrender” in Spanish.

  57. “Also, Dr Pepper isn’t even a cola, idiot.”

    Isn’t “cola” used as a broad & generic term for soft drinks, like “pop” or “soda”? So isn’t Dr Pepper a cola?

    1. “Coke” gets used as a broad term for soft drinks, especially in Texas (and, I’ve heard, other parts of the South). But I’ve never heard “cola” so used. “Cola” is a term for a specific style of soft drinks, the kind that Coca-Cola, Pepsi, RC Cola, and those fit into. Dr. Pepper is not a cola, nor is Sprite, nor is root beer.

        1. Yep. As in, “I’m running to the store to get more beer for the barbecue. You want anything?”

          “Yeah. A coke would be great.”

          “What kind?”

          “Pepsi”

    2. Not that I’ve heard. “Soda” – or if you’re in Chicago, “pop” – is the term I most often hear. If you say Cola in the midwest, you’re talking specifically cola-based drinks (Coca Cola, Pepsi, RC, etc.).

      Maybe “cola” as a catch-all is some kind of North East/New England regional thing? Anyone from Bahston or New Yak want to chime in?

      1. does living 10 years in Brooklyn qualify? cause we called it soda there. still calling it soda in PA. I did hear some people use the soda-pop amalgamation.

    3. Cola was a chemical that used to be in Cola drinks.

      Coca-Cola is a particularly interesting case. It also had Coca extract, which isn’t to be confused with cocoa. Cocoa is what chocolate comes from, Coca is what cocaine comes from. Yeah, patent medicines had a lot of nasty stuff in them. There was a reason for the Pure Food and Drug Act.

      1. As I read it, when Coke took out the leaves, they were threatened with making false claims because of the misleading name. Supposedly to this day, Coke contains de-cocainized cola leaves, though Coke doesn’t comment directly.

  58. “The modern man has thought seriously about buying a shoehorn.”

    I love that this guy thinks buying a shoehorn is the sort of purchase that requires serious thought. They are low-price items, they are all pretty much the same, and you either need one or you don’t.

    1. The modern man wipes his ass with a long-handled shoehorn chilled to a civilized 40 degrees and gently scented with honey, lemon and sage.

        1. hey.. i WISH modern american men, and women for that matter used metric system. its a LOT more convenient and precise than inches and feet and gallons and good god, measurements are all over the place. and its especially fun when working in a field where measurments are mixed up. sometimes our quest to be special starts bordering on ridiculous. soccer instead of football (even though american football has very little to do with kicking the ball, while “soccer” is all about kicking the ball and doesn’t allow hands), imperial measurement system. Fahrenheit instead of celcius, and my current favorite – musical notes. why. WHY is there a mixture of both do re mi and a b c? its confusing and unnecessary!

          /pardon the side tracked rant, but even while I’ve gotten, more or less used to most of these, its just… why are we still holding on to those? why?

          1. “its a LOT more convenient and precise than inches and feet and gallons”

            It may be more convenient (it does do away with the need for fractions, which are a pain), but it certainly is no more or less precise.

            “soccer instead of football (even though american football has very little to do with kicking the ball, while “soccer” is all about kicking the ball and doesn’t allow hands)”

            Actually, soccer is the *only* form of football that I know of that doesn’t involve the use of hands (except by the goalie). American, Canadian, Gaelic, Aussie Rules, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Calcio Fiorentino, Eton Wall Game, and Circle Rules Football (it exists, look it up) all use the hands in normal play, as did the Medieval games that all the modern forms evolved from. Association Football is the outlier, not American Football.

            ” imperial measurement system”

            America never used the Imperial system. That’s the version the British introduced in the 19th century, with the slightly smaller fluid ounce and the 20-ounce pint. The only real advantage is that a fluid ounce weighs an ounce and a gallon weighs ten pounds, which makes some calculations slightly easier.

            “WHY is there a mixture of both do re mi and a b c? its confusing and unnecessary!”

            Because do re mi is used in singing, and it’s widely used outside the United States.

            “why are we still holding on to those? why?”

            Because people are used to them, and like using them. Why force them not too? I’ve noticed that when left to their own devices people tend to use customary measurements for some things and metric for others, sometimes even mixing them. And if it works for them, why not?

            By the way, I live in England where there has been a big push over the last 40 years or so to get people using the metric system, which is exclusively taught in schools. And yet, all the road signs are in MPH, miles, yards, and feet. Most people give their height in feet, and weight in stones and pounds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby’s birth weight ever given in anything but pounds and ounces. Clothing and TV screen sizes are always given in inches, and draught beer is almost always sold in pints. Oh, yes, and milk comes in pints too.

          2. Metric is great for science, but cups and pints and gallons and all are best for cooking—if you want to be able to divide or cut in thirds on the fly. Think about it—almost all of those measurements are in sets of two. Two cups to the pint, two pints to the quart, four quarts to the gallon… I forget the teaspoon/tablespoon conversions, but those fit in neatly as well. Most people can divide by ten just fine, but ask them to cut a cake in fives and they’re going to have issues.

          3. I think it’s three teaspoons to a tablespoon and three tablespoons to a quarter cup, but I’d have to look it up.

          4. Three teaspoons to a tablespoon, a tablespoon is one-sixteenth of a cup or half a fluid ounce.

            I cook a lot.

          5. That’s the reason many items are bought by dozens instead of tens. A half of each quantity is easy enough to make, but how about a quarter? Or a third?

          6. Lots of countries had a game called Football before Association Football came along, and they generally still call those games Football.

          7. Top Gear taught me that the UK still measures plenty of stuff using English units. All of the rules of the road that specify a distance specify them in feet.

          8. Per the musical differences: the proper note names(a, b, c) are precision tools. Do, re, etc., are very useful because they are moveable. For singers, it is very easy to try a song in a different key by simply shifting do and using a pattern to reset key in your head.
            If you are still confused, try taking a college music theory course(it’s our flunk out track, btw, in the top 5 for failure rate). And you don’t want to get started on the idea of microtonality. The fact is, composers have been well ahead of audiences since Beethoven. Lay off of music, you don’t comprehend it.

  59. This is great! I showed this to both of my older brothers. Both are gay. They were raised by the same Vietnam vet/hunter/survivalist/original MacGyver that I was. Both laughed themselves till they almost threw up. When you hear your gay brother say, “Wow, what a pussy!!” That’s when you know the guy writing on how to be a modern man is a bitch. When he wrote # 25 do you think he was at a wine bar with the rest of the Metro’s spewing his love of oxford shoes, manicured beards and how skinny jeans are awesome?

  60. Awesome. I picked up my tablet, saw the MHN link and thought, “Wonder if Larry had a chance to fisk that NYT d-bag yet?” You don’t disappoint. I only wish it was available in audio format as It has delayed my Saturday morning tradition of fixing a bacon, sausage, eggs, potatoes, etc smorgasbord for the family…I’ve gotta get cracking.

  61. # 28 A real man never uses his teeth whilst fellating the gun owning, Mountain Dew drinking wu-tang hater that has just back doored him with a freshly dried melon baller.

  62. Come on, Larry. When we were taking fire in Afghanistan, the FIRST thing we did was grab our melonballers, crepe paper and party dresses. The officers were busy making sure nobody had a run in their nylons. And SCREW panty hose; you can’t win a war with half-measures. You put on stockings like a real man, or you WENT HOME.

    On the other hand, maybe that just started under Obama’s ROE. But Obama IS the patron saint of Pajama Boys everywhere… 😉

  63. I think this individual could have done much better, with fewer words by paraphrasing Robert A. Heinlein
    “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

    “A modern man (or woman, or young adult) should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”
    And,
    They should be able to do this after having been taught by an Aunt, brother, father (grand/great, etc), friend, mother(grand/great, etc), neighbor, pastor, priest, Rabbi, sister, uncle, etc.
    Then,
    They should take these skills and pass them on to those who want to learn them and in the case of those that don’t want to learn them, they will not force it upon them, only use those skills to keep society safe….even for the gouache simpletons.

  64. As someone who lives in the country and cuts down trees for a living, I don’t even know what half of these mean.

  65. Regarding 25, I think it is more reasonable to go with…
    Assuming that everyone in the household is a mentally healthy, responsible adult, training with and owning a gun can be a good defensive measure.
    That said, given that something like 20-30% of Americans qualify for some sort of mental illness…
    And that there are two or more people in most families… A substantial fraction of families are best off not having guns in the house.
    Or to put it another way, if you have or develop schizophrenia or a mood disorder…you are probably a bigger danger to family members than a robber. Don’t arm yourself.
    I know you’re speaking to the healthy majority. But, it isn’t that much of a majority, as far as I can tell.

    –Erwin

    1. “A substantial fraction of families are best off not having guns in the house.”

      Horseshit.

      The study you are referring to is likely the 2010 SAMHSA study. That is an “estimated” 45.9 million people… from a sample size of about 70k, I believe (and I will let the numbers geeks handle the methodology on that one). Such studies also have told us that people with mental illnesses are *more likely* to be *victims* of violence than perpetrators.

      So, all those people who might have had any mental or emotional condition whether or not it impairs day-to-day living are required to be less safe from predators than those who haven’t? If T-Bone decides this particular gun-free home looks like a tempting target, how is that family going to protect themselves? Mellon ballers? Shoehorns? Tactical use of apple doughnuts? The cops aren’t going to even show up for many long minutes.

      Every family is different, but this does not mean you go full-on turnip-head stupid. A man has a non-delegatable responsibility to protect his own, and a strong desire to do so in the most effective manner possible. 225 grains of lead, center mass, applied until the target ceases to be a threat, works. It works for smaller framed men, just woken up out of a dead sleep, as well as XXXL linebackers. It works for women of all sizes, in whatever caliber she is most accurate and comfortable (women have a responsibility to their families, too- the best ones know this already).

      Let each man and woman decide for *themselves* what level of training they need to meet that responsibility. If they wish to trust to blind chance, police that are overtasked and often far away, and the goodwill of the T-Bones of the world, so be it. But do not presume to tell me and mine, or anyone out there, that they are a danger to themselves when you have not clue one who they are and what their situation is.

    2. Perhaps you didn’t mean it this way, but it seems like you’re promoting the stereotype that people with mental illness are potentially violent.

      1. @Dave
        While it is true that, if you lump all people with mental illnesses together, they tend to be more at risk of violence than the reverse, this is also horseshit. Lumping together people with different illness together and then taking an average in a well-meaning attempt to decrease the stigma of mental illness isn’t honest. The problem is that mental illness usually results in excessive vulnerability (jobless, homeless, poor problem solving, odd behavior, inability to defend yourself) – which results in a lot of risk of being hurt by others. The reality is that risk ratios for violence in certain types of mental illness are high (~10x).

        Schizophrenics with persecutory delusions tend to be violent. Like my distant neighbor, who made the mistake of imprisoning an imaginary princess in his castle and who was killed by the mentally ill young man who came to save her. (Amusingly, shortly after a local judge had denied a request to institutionalize him. His parents were relieved that he’s now in prison.) Or, my friend’s wife, who, as she was being stalked by an omnipresent gang, took to confronting children on the playground to force them to reveal their masters…and who later assaulted her husband with a knife because he was ‘one of them’.) Similarly, the manic stage of bipolar and some personality disorders and autism can be very violent. There’s a reason that hospitals only have violent wards for the mentally ill, and that those wards are comparable in attendance to the non-violent wards. And, also, that we use our prisons as mental hospitals. (To put it another way, the friend’s wife had amusing stories of being repeatedly strangled in the nonviolent ward by another patient. She’s much improved on medication. Mind you, she apparently tried to kill the paramedics sent to restrain her.) Or even the lady who shot her child to save her from the dog who she imagined was about to kill her child.

        On the other hand, suicide, both rational and irrational is common in cases of depression, the depressive stage of bipolar, and some personality disorders.

        @Dan If you or a family member is ill enough to be periodically institutionalized and the individual in question has tendencies either towards self-harm, poor grasp of reality, or irrational aggression, I’d argue that the family is better served by reducing availability of quick violent tools. (And, this fits an awful lot of mental illness.)

        For instance, the suicide rate in schizophrenia is something like 10%, with 20-40% attempting suicide. The death rate from robbery is something like 0.1%. Now, there’s an argument that suicide may be a rational response, and why not use something easy and reliable… But, overall, if like was worth living, making it a bit less convenient to kill yourself might be wise.

        Similarly, if you’re bipolar, maybe you’d be best off not holding a gun when you assault the meter maid for giving you a ticket. Less tongue-in-cheek, the death rate for domestic violence is in the neighborhood of 0.05%. Given that violent mental disorders increase violence risk by roughly 10x, it seems reasonable to guess that families with a mentally ill person disposed to violence might also be better off without guns in the household.

        Many mentally ill people, while reasonable functional adults, on average, should probably not carry firearms at all times. A reasonable threshold is whether or not they have been institutionalized and whether or not they are more likely then not to be institutionalized again at some point.

        If someone is sufficiently ill, I will support laws designed both to remove their access to firearms and, in some cases, to institutionalize them permanently (persecutory delusions with drug-resistant schizophrenia and a history of violence…). I’m pretty clear on the with regards to individuals with a high risk of violence and less clear on that with respect to individuals with a high risk of suicide. Taking away the option of armed self-defense is a big step, and probably should be done sparingly legally. There’s also real individual liberty argument to be made in regards to a right to die. (Admittedly, some of these laws already exist.)

        That said, overall, gun ownership doesn’t seem to change much. (compare crime and suicide rates in England) And it provides herd immunity to oppression to some extent. Admittedly, I think sniper rifles are probably the most effective for that application.

        1. They make very good rapid access gun safes these days that seem like a good idea for those times that your gun isn’t safely secured on your person. I bought one but haven’t actually set it up yet (not having toddlers in the home or anyone I’m particularly worried about harming themselves) but the idea is that a pistol can be kept in one, loaded and ready, and the box can be opened with a short, very simple, combination of button presses. It’s just not that complicated.

          Nor are people so clueless about their own situation that they need a lecture from someone about it.

  66. > The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,”
    > not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton.

    This may be true for the NYT Modern Man, but the Real-World Man not only uses the word “chopper” but often also follows it up with a short string of letters & numbers and the words “Request clearance for take-off.”

    1. The modern man would never fly in one of those collections of spare parts in formation. He is to afraid to fly anything without a first class section

  67. I’d say that this “man” suffers from an excess of estrogen, but estrogen is actually useful, unlike this this piece of human debris.

    If either of my sons grow up and turn into this guy, I will consider myself to have failed as a father.

  68. Re: #16
    Every real man knows the woman gets the side of the bed closest to the bathroom. The other 18 inches is all yours.

  69. The modern man knows every word to “You’re Still a Young Man” by Tower of Power so he knows how to never think.

  70. Thankfully my unit was issued melon ballers and melon baller holsters before deploying to Iraq. Some of our comrades were less well provisioned though, at least until CENTCOM gave a standing order that all portions of watermelon and cantaloupe would be regulation shape and diameter. Of course the insurgents often targeted our supply convoys hoping to deprive our forces of melon ballers as well as shoe horns, which we relied on heavily in combat after realizing how unnecessary guns were.

      1. Per STANAG 5150 as amended in 2008, all member NATO militaries use a standardized melon baller. The problem has been they’ve been unable to date to develop a standardized melon and each nation insists on enlisting their proprietary fruit…

  71. I didn’t know melons had balls or that I had to castrate them.
    At the risk of sounding homophobic, eat them? Really?
    Haha, I’m joking of course. I am homophobic, but only when I think about it, (almost never.)
    This guy is doing a Bruce Jenner on melons?
    #17a : Modern me don’t shop for “man berries” but shop for “hey look at those melons.”

  72. I’m still a bit fuzzy on the “bring me the severed and slowly dying sexual organs of a plant to demonstrate your affection”.
    I think that’s deeply creepy.

    I also think the thought should haunt pajama boy’s dreams. She’s coming for him next. If she hasn’t already.

  73. Michael Mann? Pretty sure that’s a typo; Pajama Boy meant Michael *Moore*. Siri fixed it for him out of sheer embarrassment.

  74. If I fit the bill of a modern man, the expression gauche would actually be extremely offensive to me . It literally is french for left, and is just below sinister on ways of demeaning southpaws. This imposition of a dextrocentric worldview is an inexcusable example of hate speech against a minority which was oppressed in western society up until a few decades ago, and in many cultures, continues to be repressed and regarded as unclean. As one of God’s other children, this act of malice will continue to be ignored by me.

    1. There are actually a lot of words/phrases in modern English that I’m surprised the PC crowd hasn’t gotten up in arms about yet.

  75. Well done! But no one else seems to have mentioned that this guys name is Lombardi! Vince, a mans man if there ever was one, must surely be rolling over in his grave!

  76. When you realize that this was quite obviously written by a woman who is injecting her own preferences for men, this all makes sense.

  77. thank you for the laughs Larry, definitely perked up my day 😛
    incidentally, given the blackhole that are vanity sizes? I myself don’t even know which brands and models of shoes will run large or small, etc. I mean.. it varies even within the same brand. you have to try on shoes before buying them. its a must. and show me a single woman who actualy appreciates someone other then professional stylist choosing which shoes she should be wearing? and I’ll show you a liar.

    little spoon, big spoon thing was also cracking me up. and there I thought spooning was about how good it felt to be hugging each other..

    #16 incidentally is outright misogyny, assumption that a woman cannot take care of herself.

    oh and from now on, I’m calling that collection of soap slivers my husband always ends up with – mutant soap 😛

    1. You’re very right on the shoe thing. I don’t know who this guy is that he thinks men buys shoes for their wives or that their wives would want them to. (Incidentally, the only brand I know how it runs is Nike because I end up having to buy those when I want tennis shoes because narrow feet, and even then it varies between styles so trying on is a must.) With women’s clothing in general, vanity sizing is the opposite of helpful.

  78. So overall we have 2 for 27, with his ‘correct’ picks, probably by dumb luck rather than any actual wisdom.

    There are honest to god anime fans out there who are more manly than this NYT writer.

  79. I think, by the time you’ve set out to make a list to explain mainlines you’ve already failed. It’s simpler than that. A man is someone who does hard but necessary things to keep his little part of the world running.

    Now, before someone tells me that a woman can do hard and necessary things; I know. That’s the thing about necessity. It doesn’t get you to fill out an eeo form. It often shows up at 3AM and men and women and even little children and house pets get hit. However, when we have the option, and when we have a job no one else wants to do, it’s often a man who does it.

    This list kind of orbits around that in a series of stylistic quirks and related behaviors. Our fathers and grandfathers fought in WW2, and they wore shiny shoes and read the paper so the author thinks reading the paper and wearing shiny shoes are manly things. However, it wasn’t the shoes, or the paper, or even the *war* that made them men, it was facing up to the hard necessity.

    If you’re doing something important, you don’t want to worry the people who are counting on you, that’s why you’d put a brave face on things as in number 2. Likewise, once you’ve gotten through a few rough things your parking space, how your food is cooked, and your soft drink doesn’t seem that important.

    However, when things are hard it’s not wrong to feel bad or even need a bit of assurance. (It *is* wrong to tell me how you spoon, but whatever…) I do think a real man takes that assurance to heart as quickly as possible. If you’re sitting around worrying or crying you’re not getting the job done, and that’s what it’s all about.

  80. I really wonder about people like the pathetic pajamaboy who wrote the original piece. Did he actually think he was being funny or relevant? Did he not realize the hellstorm of mockery, ridicule, and abuse that would sweep over him from every corner of the blogosphere when his puerile gibberish hit the Internet? And will (or can) he learn from this experience, or will it take violent death or a prefrontal lobotomy to make him stop writing this kind of crap?

  81. Why does the Modern Man sound so much like one of the chicks from “Sex In The City”? My father, who had to become the man of the house at age 11 in the midst of the Depression, then served in both WW2 and Korea, would have left me to die like a deformed Spartan infant if I had manifested any of these traits. God bless him.

  82. #16 I’d think it would be “Honey, I’ll ‘hold him off’ with my pistol while you get the shotgun”. Except there’d be no need to say that, the gunshots would be the clue as to the intended division of labor.

    I believe Kenneth Cole shoes only go up to 14… and they run narrow, so this much smaller man won’t be wearing them either. Real men wear shoes that fit if that’s a choice.

  83. Muwahahaha, but Larry I have a question: Why were you reading the NYTimes? Isn’t it a NEWSPAPER (see #22)? And an extremely leftist Newspaper at that. Clearly you are the “Good Man” standing in the way of evil so it doesn’t prevail, thanks for taking that bullet for me. I on the other hand never read the NY Times unless I mistakenly follow a link there.

    1. When something really idiotic is written a bunch of fans will send it to me, hoping for a fisking. It is the same with Salon, Slate, HuffPo, Mother Jones, etc.

  84. Good work. Needs editing in a couple places. #21 Leviticus said “thou shalt” not “though shalt”. #1 “Who the hell buys shoes for their wife?” Why use the singular “their”? Are we supposed to understand “their wife” as “his or her wife”?

  85. Oh my friend (I use the term friend for anyone who can clearly articulate common sense) , you hit this spot on. I could go on and on about my agreement however; I would not take a single word to reiterate what you have already “nailed. Thank you for restoring my faith in a thinking human race. 🙂

  86. Given every thing else in it’s list, especially his habit of stomping about in his high priced leftard made oxfords, everyone is better of with little Bri-Bri not having a gun. She seems to be rather prone to rages.

  87. The shoehorn, Brian so desperately craves, is obviously necessary to pry out his undescended testicles.
    Everything you have stated is the truth.
    Source: I’m a woman.

  88. I did buy my wife’s shoes and I sometimes ask sizes because things change over time or they differ by style. Also bought her the garter belts, bustiers, stockings – and let’s not forget the catholic school girl outfits. It was negligees in the old days but times change.

    I always put my list on paper. Put it in my pocket. Work from memory. Forget something on the list. And then get shiit for it when I get home.

    I have no use for cokes (or other soft drinks) in the house unless there is a party and there is 151 in the house. So I think he got that one wrong. Maybe soda in the summer time for the gin.

    I have no use for guns in the house. I had kids and now grand kids. I think he got that one right. Want to protect your daughters? Raise them to be strong independent women that don’t have to depend on a man. Want to protect your sons? Tell them to stay sober and out of the military. This country is way too careless with its military and the highways are dangerous. Also if you live in Texas – find them a campus that doesn’t allow students to carry on campus.

    Oh – the modern man has no need for Blue Ray. We keep the whole vid library on MP4s and MKVs these days. Or just stream it. It’s just easier.

          1. As I believe you said, the modern man knows when someone is writing with his tongue in his cheek.

            Do you actually enjoy looking like a fool? Is that why you keep showing up?

          2. Come on, Larry, he’s NOT an Asshole. THAT orifice, after all, has a USE. . . . 😉

      1. “Oh – one more. The modern man knows when someone is writing with his tongue in his cheek.”

        Yeah but… since it’s you, how are people supposed to know? Which part are you saying was you joking?

      1. I don’t think it made any difference on that campus and that event but I think concealed carry is allowed by students and has been for a bit. One student who was packing said it was an impossible situation. Pull out your gun and you might get shot by SWAT.

          1. I wonder when Kameron Hurley will write her next Hugo Award-winning post about how the Patriarchy has erased female serial killers from history. She can call it “We Have Always Been Cold-Blooded Murderers.”

          2. And of course – as always – Hurley’s footnotes will come courtesy of her own C Drive.

        1. given that a certain soldier is currently recovering in a hospital from multiple gunshot wounds from confronting the shooter and even without a gun was very likely able to save multiple lives through his actions? do you honestly think that things wouldn’t have been different if aforementioned law abiding citizen WAS allowed to carry a firearm? this shooter rampaged thought the school for what probably felt like eternity before police (aka men with guns) showed up… and then suicided. and he took his time too, according to articles. he made people grovel and beg and crawl on the ground before shooting them. he COULD have been taken down and lives COULD have been saved.

          1. @Leah – he was allowed to carry a firearm. He just didn’t carry a firearm. The question is… “If concealed carry was not allowed, would the account have been different?” No – the court decision allowing concealed carry on this campus was not relevant.

            So often that is the case. Not everything is a point a of an argument.

        2. Your argument for being unarmed, and thus being defenseless against murder from an active shooter as well as unable to protect others, is that you might be, at a later time, shot by SWAT? In the case of “someone is shooting at me”, you argue, “someone else might show up and also shoot at me” as the reason to avoid being armed for self defense?

          Gotta say, I can’t figure a way to argue against that kind of logic.

          1. @ Andrew that isn’t my argument. That is the reasoning of one of the people who was there that day that actually had a concealed firearm but did not draw it..

          2. “That is the reasoning of one of the people who was there that day that actually had a concealed firearm but did not draw it.”

            Source or git.

            What I have read is that the AF vet who was carrying didn’t respond because the school staff forced him into following the school’s “shelter in place” policy.

          3. “Parker explained that his military training provided him with the skills to “go into danger,” but said he felt lucky he and others didn’t try to get involved going after Mercer.

            “Luckily we made the choice not to get involved,” he explained. “We were quite a distance away from the building where this was happening. And we could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was, their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were. And if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys.”

            http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/armed-vet-destroys-gun-nuts-argument-on-mass-shooters-by-explaining-why-he-didnt-attack-oregon-killer/

            Not to get off on a tangent, my initial modern man comment was that in Texas one should try to find a campus that doesn’t allow concealed carry and send the kids there. When Andrew suggested the campus in Oregon fit my criteria, I simply point out that it doesn’t. However had my criteria been in place, it would not have prevented that shooting. It just happens that concealed carry didn’t prevent it either but that is just happenstance. My “find a school that doesn’t allow” isn’t built around the nut gunman but rather the drunk freshman so the Oregon example isn’t really on target.

            Essentially it’s the same reason we didn’t allow firearms in bars. I guess that is still the case but I don’t know. Long ago I worked the door at a popular club and a sign at the entrance cautioned bringing in a gun would result in 5 years in prison. Cops in civilian clothes did but they often told me they were cops and were carrying in that day.

            We also didn’t allow hats which cut down on fights. Alcohol raises testosterone levels.

          4. So, your argument is “because people quite a distance away had no impact on the shooting, it would have been of no benefit for those actually involved to be armed”.

            Again, can’t really argue with that sort of logic.

          5. You can argue with yourself about it. You are simply constructing an argument that I have not made. That comment in quotations is your comment not mine. You remind me of system players who try to build systems around examples because the math is hard. Seriously. I have no comment on how things might have been different in Oregon.

          6. If you have no comment, and you’re posting for reasons other than to listen to your keyboard, you should clarify an argument.

            This is known,, colloquially, as “put up or shut up”.

          7. I can’t clarify an argument I didn’t make. It’s your argument – you clarify it.

            My advice to you is to try to read more slowly.

          8. So, it’s really just the joy of your own typing that brings you here. You propose no solutio not, take no position, and voice no opinion you’re willing to clarify and defend. You’re just making content free noise.

          9. @Andrew – it isn’t the topic. I also didn’t discuss climate change, the latest “Blacklist” episode, or Jamie Lee Curtis. Similarly, not the topic. But feel free to express yourself.

          10. Witness the stupid motherfucker who posts hundreds of comments not related to the topic under discussion on a blog where everybody thinks he is a tool, telling other posters how they can express themselves. 🙂

          11. “My “find a school that doesn’t allow” isn’t built around the nut gunman but rather the drunk freshman …”

            Ah, the old “people will start shootouts at the drop of a hat” argument. Which has been trotted out again and again whenever a new state starts considering allowing concealed carry anywhere at all, yet somehow the much-feared bloodbaths by concealed-carry permit holders never happen. In fact, concealed-carry permit holders are far more law-abiding than the average citizen.

            So your hypothetical school that doesn’t allow concealed-carry permit holders to carry? Some permit holders will still attend, but others will choose a different school — and thus, the average criminality of students at the school will go up, because some of the far-less-criminal-than-average group that would have attended have been replaced people from the average group. Simple Bayesian analysis.

            Good job on recommending your kids go to a school that is, on average, less safe than the one where concealed-carry permit holders are allowed to carry their weapons.

          12. Rather than taking the time to explain how very little you actually understand about violent encounters, I’m just going to call you a fucking idiot and move on.

          13. Right back at you big guy. Wish I could do it to your face though. You internet heroes are always tuff on the forums.

          14. Moron, my name is Larry Correia and you are posting on my blog. Where I write… Under my own name. In public. As a public figure. I would be glad to call you a dipshit to your face. Because you are a dipshit.

            You are an anonymous internet pussy, annoying and dumb. So I’m making fun of you. I’m also taking your select best bits of stupidity and sharing them with others for our amusement. The only reason you’re still here is because you’ve not bored me yet.

            If you would like this to end, all you have to do is quit spamming my blog comments with off topic stupid shit. It is pretty simple really.

          15. You’re simply a moron.

            Many years ago I wrote an article about people making stupid assumptions about violent encounters, called “My Gunfight”. It was aimed at people far smarter than you.

          16. Yawn – I am sure it’s a cult classic … from an internet hero. Would you do it to my face ? Naw. Just like you left the Hugo Award all sunny till you thought about it. Then with your little puppy dog tail between your legs you started the bitching – internet hero style. Did you do it there in person hero? Naw.

            Maybe Owen Zastava Pitt would. But you are not really him are you Mary Sue.

          17. Uh huh. Tell it to my melon baller. You can do so in person. My tour schedule is posted already, anonymous internet pussy.

            And your grammar and punctuation use is really starting to degrade. Are you off your meds?

          18. You know, only SJW Numbers is fucking stupid enough to think he has a grasp on what happens during and after shootings. Yes, dumb ass, we thought of that too, and it is one of things good instructors go into during training.

            By the way, I wrote the primer for the United States Concealed Carry Association about what to do in the aftermath of a violent encounter and how to interact with law enforcement.

          19. Typical Larry Correia lie. I never claimed I knew what went on in a gunfight. I simply reported what the person that was there claimed. What is the saying… Puppies always lie. Puppies always project. “Always” is probably a bad word but “Generally” would work.

          20. I never claimed I knew what went on in a gunfight. I simply reported what the person that was there claimed.

            You quoted him as evidence for your assertion that “I don’t think it made any difference on that campus and that event but I think concealed carry is allowed by students and has been for a bit.” By the normal rules of argument, which you are currently trying to weasel out of, it is fair to assume that you agree with his assessment. Because if you didn’t agree with him, why did you quote him? To say, “Well, here’s someone who thought that if he intervened he’d be shot by the SWAT team, which is a darn shame because it prevented him from saving a bunch of lives”? That’s the position we’re taking. So are you saying that the guy was wrong? Or that he was right?

            But wait, you’ve already answered that one: you’ve said that you “have no comment on how things might have been different in Oregon.” (Funny how often you’ve posted on a subject on which you “have no comment.”) In other words, you are refusing to stake out any position, because you know that any position you take, we’ll have lots of evidence to argue against. Which is the act of an intellectual coward. Be a man, take a position, and defend it.

            In other words, we’re challenging you to a duel of wits. if you continue to refuse to pick up the gauntlet, we’re going to continue to conclude that you would feel unarmed in such a duel.

          21. @Robin
            I was pointing out that my criteria of not allowing a concealed carry would make any difference. Concealed carry in fact was neither good or bad and not germane to my Modern Man comment. My posting is simply to point out that you guys are arguing with yourself about Oregon. My post was about the Modern Man.

          22. Your posts are bullshit about bullshit, meandering from comment thread to comment thread, and usually not related to the topic at all. It wouldn’t be so pathetic if you didn’t post here hundreds of times.

          23. Uh huh. Yes, we know Vox Day lives rent free in your head. Carry on, noble dipshit. 😀

          24. “Puppy Kickers always lie. Puppy Kickers always project. “Always” is probably a bad word but “Generally” would work”

            There, fixed that for you. Now it’s the truth.

        3. Sort of, but it is complicated. Oregon is legally where Utah was a decade ago. We had the same thing here, with the AG and the courts weighing in on the side of concealed carry, but the universities having policies against it in order to dissuade students and employees from being armed. So legal, but people avoided it out of fear of hassle, job loss, or expulsion. Most people don’t want to fight court battles just to go to school or have a job. That is actually the thing that got me involved in state politics to begin with.

          And I wrote that out for other posters here, because SJW Numbers doesn’t care. He’ll just switch it up and come back with more unrelated bullshit in a different post. It is better just to make fun of him.

          1. In Indiana most “no guns allowed” signs (there are a few) have no legal weight. The most that can happen is that if someone notices you carrying, they can ask you to leave (they don’t need a reason so any reason is as good as any other) and if you don’t its criminal trespass.

            Nevertheless, most people won’t carry in places posted “no carry”.

            A few stubborn gits and “concealed means concealed”

      1. I’m amazed that he’s using the report of a guy who holed up and moved to defend those around him with a gun as evidence that guns don’t help.

        1. The general narrative of “people with guns will think they’re Rambo and will charge in and get innocent people killed so they shouldn’t have guns” has turned into “see, they didn’t play Rambo and and charge across campus to do something and that makes all your arguments that anyone should be armed totally invalid.” Whatever SJW said in particular or not, I’ve seen the same progression several times elsewhere.

          1. The “how dare you not match the caricature I made up to denigrate you?!” thing?

    1. Trust me. Nobody cares what you do, Numbers. And we really don’t want to hear about your waifu pillow bride.

        1. Serious question: why do you comment here? Arguing is good. It brings out all the facets of a position and strengthens a stand or changes people’s minds. But in order to do that, others must respect you.

          No one here respects you. You argue in bad faith and continually change the topic of conversation to what is convenient rather than the facts presented to you.

          Again, I will repeat so as to attempt to break through to you. NO ONE HERE RESPECTS YOU. Without respect, you will sway no one on any topic other than the fact you are an incessant troll.

          1. Don’t bother trying. At this point I’m just sharing his quotes with other people to get a laugh.

          2. I don’t think he’s interested in persuading anyone. I suspect, deep down, that its somewhat a masochistic or superiority complex type thing. There’s a presumption that we are an inferior lot, and by being against us, he confirms his own superiority. There’s no attempt to produce an argument or defend a conclusion, it’s about the emotional charge. Here, he can fight a righteous cause and the opposition and verbal beating provides evidence of his moral superiority.

          3. I pretty much knew he was an SJW, but wanted to give one more rational attempt at communication. I have biting back all the “fuck offs” that have been popping up in my head while reading his drivel.

          1. He’s here for the same reason that we have hashtag paladins. There’s a sense of moral superiority that comes from speaking out against wrong, and here he can fight a perceived evil at zero risk.

            He doesn’t even have to pronounce, much less defend, any position to get his emotional payback. Merely leaving his safe space is enough to give the emotional satisfaction.

          2. Andrew,

            You’ve nailed Numbers’ motivations. He’s here to get his goodfeelz from having “battled evil” in the form of “sexism”, “racism”, and/or the other “isms” he believes us to be collectively guilty of. I hadn’t realized it until you posted, but that’s clearly what he’s doing. Well done for pointing it out.

  89. I’m sticking to these from a far wiser man…
    1. Money cannot buy happiness but its more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than on a bicycle.
    2. Forgive your enemy but remember the bastard’s name.
    3. Help someone when they are in trouble and they will remember you when they’re in trouble again.
    4. Many people are alive only because it’s illegal to shoot them.
    5. Alcohol does not solve any problems, but then again, neither does milk.
    6. I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.

  90. The whole article could be summarized as “the modern man is a complete pussy.”

    He is trying desperately to justify himself and his lack of ability by pretending that this is how men should be. It’s transparent and pathetic.

  91. “The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.”

    I guarantee that this one is why the rest of the article was written. Because the NYT would not run a 16-word article.

  92. Who buys their woman shoes? Unless they told you what they liked last time you went shopping together, get her a gift certificate, she will just return the shoes and they will get the shoes they want. A big mistake. I agree, a metro sexual trying to pretend to be a manly man. I agree. I don’t care what kind of music you listen to unless you are forcing me to listen to something I hate. I don’t care what kind of soft drink you like. I know how to eat popcorn without making loud noises. I know how to use a gun and defend myself and loved ones. I will ask help if I need it. Stay out of others business unless it is affecting you.

  93. From a commenter at Vile 770:

    ““Regarding the “modern man” article, you need to scroll down to point 25 to see why it has Correia so upset.”

    Yup.

    A Real Man projects his insecurities about Scary Others into fantasies about shooting down intruders, regardless of the actual reality that you’re four time more likely to accidentally shoot a member of your household than an intruder.”

    1. More evidence that File 770 is a hotbed of white supremacism. The Hoop Spur Church Massacre was ninety six years ago, almost to date.

      Recently I heard somebody praise that FDR hagiography, which outright mentioned that FDR enjoyed screening a Wilson hagiography at the White House.

      The Democrats have again contrived to burn down minority neighborhoods just this year.

    2. Well that’s a good point at 770 that Larry is defending his gun agenda as far as it goes but in my opinion there is a bit more going on. Larry is a niche marketer. You see his audience represented here. He started by marketing to gun enthusiast.

      MHI was pretty successful and it looked like he may go mainstream but then he didn’t win an award and something cracked. He writes about that.

      Now you see that he has turned MHI into a political blog. That whole Sad/Rabid thing has become a political movement by those who see their culture changing before their eyes. It doesn’t have anything to do with SF/F.

      In another blog Larry talks about seeing the lines of people waiting to see Jim Butcher and how he isn’t that guy. He can never be that guy. If you go to Jim Butcher’s sight it isn’t a political blog and if you want to have your post deleted, post things that are posted here. Listen to Jim Butcher talk at the various Cons. I watched a number of videos of Butcher on Youtube. He is involved in his work and his characters and he is charming. He isn’t calling people names and promoting conspiracies and trying to sabotage an award. He is mainstream. He has wide appeal and it doesn’t matter a person’s political orientation.

      But as Larry says, he isn’t that guy. Agreed He is niche marketing to the right wing. That’s part of what his fisking of a TIC article is about – not just point 25.

      1. Butcher choosing to ignore retarded psychopaths like K. Tempest Bradford, Jim HInes and Requires Hate is hardly the benchmark for behavior in America. However SJWs in SFF have established a benchmark for shunning Vox Day while in principle supporting a hundred David Dukes. Were that rule established behavior for America the continent would be one steaming ruin from coast to coast.

      2. Jim Butcher’s wide appeal, charming characters, and status as a nice guy didn’t prevent No Award from getting more votes for Best Novel at the Hugos. So, I’m not seeing your point there, unless it’s “we’ll ostracize anyone, even mainstream people with wide appeal, who has any association with views we dislike”.

      3. So supporting a long-established constitutional right is an “agenda”?

        Your struggles with language are painful to behold.

      4. “MHI was pretty successful and it looked like he may go mainstream but then he didn’t win an award and something cracked. He writes about that.

        Now you see that he has turned MHI into a political blog. That whole Sad/Rabid thing has become a political movement by those who see their culture changing before their eyes. It doesn’t have anything to do with SF/F.”

        Time to pack it up guys, apparently this mind-reader over here used his psychoanalytic prowess to find a man’s deep seated insecurity a-la Freud and to see through our nefarious schemes to distract the masses with a campaign with clearly stated goals and methods and has discovered our nefarious true intentions.

        And since when has MHN not had a political side? Larry’s been giving his own political commentary since damn near post numero uno. If anything Sad Puppies was just the most recent instance(albeit protracted over many individual episodes) of Larry using the blog to talk about politics. And at that the SP campaign took in people from all over the political spectrum, so how political could it have been, really?

        1. Ha! That dumb ass. 😀 Which is why this blog has been political since years before my first book came out!

      5. I read a post where Larry explained that he couldn’t be that guy (he’s likely written more than one)… as in… he *couldn’t* be that guy, he didn’t have the *option* of being non-political or keeping his political (gun) advocacy on the down low or separate from his author persona because he was already a public political figure. Did you read that post? What about that particular time line was obscure to you?

        Granted, it’s a bit soul killing to feel like you’ve got to hide your opinions, either political or religious, so he may have *chosen* not to be that guy if given the opportunity to make an actual choice about it. It’s easy enough to compartmentalize, we all do at our jobs when we choose not to over-share about our personal lives, but that’s a different thing than feeling that you’ve got to actively hide your views. Talk to Sarah Hoyt about that… she’s written blog posts on the subject and I know that I can identify with the fear and lots of other people do as well.

        Also… waiting for the equal opportunity griping about 770’s freely chosen politicalization, or Scalzi’s or pretty much the entire “establishment” making a free choice to become 100% political and social policing units over the genre.

        Butcher is classy… there are others as well… but there aren’t very many.

        1. For being a ‘niche author’ Larry sure does outsell the majority of the in crowd at World Con. (Yeah, Martin, but he’s kinda the exception there too)

          The simple fact that he’s making a good living on writing alone puts him well into the top 10% of authors, though I don’t have concrete stats. (I do know most authors are below 10k a year, midlisters with 1 book/year are more like 5k.)

      6. Well that’s a good point at 770 that Larry is defending his gun agenda as far as it goes but in my opinion there is a bit more going on.

        By “opinion” you mean what the voices in your tiny overheated little head tell you the bad icky people you hate “really” feel?

      7. Dear Loki on the throne of Asgard, that’s nonsensical.
        You realize that you wrote a incoherent version of Wet Streets cause Rain?
        Before he was a writer, he was a gun owner, activist, professional trainer, expert witness to a legislative hearing, gun store owner and moderator of a firearms forum. Both MHI and the Dead Six series began as postings on that forum’s fiction section.
        He didn’t start by marketing to gun enthusiasts, he was a gun enthusiast who started writing books. I was reading his blog before he published, because I liked his gun and politics writing.
        Stop trying to make up history and you might someday accomplish something.

      8. Your timeline is all screwed up. I was political long before I was an fiction author. I wrote for gun magazines for years before I published fiction. I was also a Title 7 SOT, CCW instructor, and have forgotten more about guns that you will ever know. But yeah, you got me, I just talk about guns to sell novels.

        Dipshit.

        I know Butcher. We’ve talked about this topic many times. It isn’t my place to share another man’s beliefs or explain how they market themselves.

        As for me? I’m the guy who says the stuff that other many other writers wish they could say. Because I can get away with it. Why? Because of that loyal “niche” market. And by the way, that “niche” is big enough to pay me lots of money.

        1. I kinda get the feeling that Butcher lets his books speak for him, and thereby reaches a larger audience than he might otherwise. I really respect that. I respect those (like Larry) who can pointedly and effectively defend their controversial opinions, but I for one am not like that. I’d have been better off to have realized that fact even sooner. Frankly, that’s probably true for a lot more people than realize it. It’s handy to have people like Larry, who we can just get behind and go, “Yeah, that!” without actually having to be that clever or well-documented or risk-taking ourselves. Personally, I’m still learning to keep my trap shut in public because it generally doesn’t do any good to voice my opinions on such matters. (I made the mistake once of explaining one of my stories to my audience, well after they’d all had time to form their own opinions of its meaning, and ooh, the looks I got.)

          1. They pay me a couple hundred grand a year, so I don’t know if they’re as niche as you’d like to imagine they are, dipshit. 🙂

          2. Some of that was my money dipshit. Some of your readers are beyond your target market. And congrats on the sales.

      9. “MHI was pretty successful and it looked like he may go mainstream but then he didn’t win an award and something cracked.”

        This seems to be the party line among the Usual Suspects these days. Larry Correia was a nice guy until he was passed over for an award and then he turned into the International Lord of Evil.

        Speaking as someone who was a fan of Larry before that, I say: bunk.

        1. …and even when pointed out how wrong that little “theory” is he keeps repeating it. He tried that line around the time of the Hugo Awards results.

          Oh wait: SJW. They’ll keep repeating the lie, hoping it will magically become true.

    3. “…you’re four time more likely to accidentally shoot a member of your household than an intruder.”

      Good Christ. For all the times its been debunked, that bullshit just won’t die.

      1. Let me guess, they only count intruders shot dead as a “successful defense” and ignore the times an intruder surrenders or runs away screaming?

        1. And by “family member” they mean “person known to the shooter” which includes gang bangers (who generally know the folk in rival gangs), drug deals gone bad, and anywhere where the shooter and shootee have even a passing familiarity with each other.

    4. That 4x stat is has been debunked so many times it is ridiculous.

      And I’ve never needed a gun inside my own home. My wife however has, and that would be rapist found a better place to be really quickly. So this 770 fuckwit could ask her about “Scary Others” sometime. 🙂

  94. While I’m pretty sure the article was intended as sarcasm…. it seems to have invoked Poe’s Law, and invoked it well. After all, if these Modern Men didn’t have melon ballers, they’d have no balls at all.

  95. “What is this, Leviticus?”

    So this guy thinks the police and soldiers he relies on to protect him aren’t real men? That men who wear boots to work aren’t real men?

    But who am I to talk? I don’t own a single Michael Bay movie on blu-ray.

  96. Am I the only one who has a fantasy of sitting the epicene dingbat who wrote this ridiculous list down, with the tacit threat of violence should he not comply, and make him read this Fisking slowly, with great attention to detail?

    The husk of Vince Lombardi mutters in its tomb that its namesake could write something so craven.

  97. I will merely note that New York City seems to have more assholes per square foot than any other place I’ve ever been. Not -everyone- is an asshole, but many are.

    More than a few are apparently employed by the New York Times.

  98. Well I have to add one more instance of Ok for a man to cry. After reading this epic take down of pajama boy I was crying tears of laughter! Thanks for fishing this NYT tripe.

  99. I’m still drawing a blank on the “little spoon” thing. I get an idea from context, but in my silverware drawer all the tablespoons nest together, then the long tea spoons, then the stupid little spoons my wife won’t let me throw away, then the forks, etc.

    What? Some people store cutlery by place setting instead of like-with-like?

    1. I didn’t get it until I read Lileks and I don’t remember what he said that made the light bulb go on. Apparently the “little spoon” is the person who is on the “inside” of a spooning couple, with the other person’s arms around them.

      Since I’m a small person I actually had a flare of anger when I realized what it was because of the implied emotional fragility of being the “little spoon”. Excuse me? It’s no wonder these idiot feminists put dominance narratives onto every situation. It’s the way they think.

      1. A couple cuddling like that would seem to need a lot of trust in each other. Even if the ‘big spoon’ can have their back to the wall.

        It is almost like normal people don’t perch tactically on their bed, half-asleep and along.

  100. I’m actually kind of surprised that this “modern man” got permission from the womyn in his life to even eat meat.

  101. I would be a happy woman if I had a man who instead of flowers, walked in and said “Hunny, want to go to the range?”.

  102. I’m pretty sure the original NYT article was meant to be satirical in some way. It’s making fun of those “modern men” who care more about melon ballers (whatever those things are) than they do about things that actually matter. The article is posted in the “Self-Help” section just to mock all the other articles in there. At least, that’s my impression…

    1. I have found that there are two types of satire most susceptible to Poe’s Law, the really good kind, and the really awful kind. In my mind, this qualifies as the former rather than the latter.

    2. It’s possible, but considering that this is the kind of advice that is actually given to men by serious people, and there was no subtitle like “As compiled from Cosmo and Good Housekeeping” to signal that it was not meant to be taken seriously…. well, the odds are against it being satire.

  103. Also from the 770 Club:

    “Rev. Bob on October 4, 2015 at 12:35 pm said:
    The modern man does not have the slightest interest in the opinions of attention-addicted, insecure Neandertals whose senses of self-worth can be measured by the size of their gun collections.”

    He said, giving Larry his attention. 😀

    1. I almost asked if they were defending the original article or just trying to take weak potshots, but

      a) they haven’t earned the right for me to care what they think,

      b) insinuating that Larry is a Neanderthal is hilarious given the amount of crap they gave Vox for insinuating the same thing, (and having read some of the actual articles that talk about Neanderthal DNA in Homo Sapiens Sapiens genome, I am pretty sure he was trying to get them to misunderstand, since it is Europeans that have said non-human DNA and not people whose ancestors more recently departed Africa, so he was referring to himself as not being fully H.S.S. Could be wrong, Vox isn’t on the list of people whose opinion I especially care about either.)

      c) Also amusing how they seem to ‘know’ the relationship is between anyone’s gun and their self-worth is given that they assuredly don’t own any and have most certainly not ever actually talked to Larry about guns or heard him talk about his own.

    2. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of simple minds.” — and 770 is majorly hob-ridden…

  104. That’s an astonishingly rambling and at parts strangely-specific list. Aside from the weird notion that “real men don’t need guns” (of course we don’t, we shoot death rays from our eyes!) 😀 the rest of it is just a laundry list of his personal preferences, including things like shoe brands (!!!) I mean, I could make a list of the things I like to do and claim that this is what distinguishes the, um, “perfect fan” or “ultimate intellectual” or “ginchiest of the really cool dudes” or whatever, but I’m not under the delusion that my favorite flavor of donut represents some Deep Universal Truth.

    Really, Lombardi must be very arrogant!

    1. Donuts – Raised Glazed. (Otherwise known as Sugar with some sugar with sugar drizzled on the top.

      Ice Cream – Vanilla. Best toppings… marshmallow or malt powder and corn syrup.

      This is your serving of Deep Universal Truth…

  105. Just F-ing awesome.
    Pure and Simple!
    Hilarious and Pajama Boy from the obama care tv ad (that visual) was spot-on.

  106. I’m highly disappointed he didn’t have this:
    #28: Modern Man drives a Hybrid or all-electric car.
    Frankly, If you can’t drive a stick, your father was a failure. And the only hybrid you should ever even be allowed to consider is a Denali… and even that is pushing your manly man manhoodliness to the edge; it is only allowed because you can rub the ‘hybrid’ in the pretentious face of some Prius driving college professor.

    and #23 and #25 cannot co-exist. I think he meant “Michael Moore films”…

    1. Cars with a stick are getting hard to find. Whose car are you going to borrow to teach your kid?

      Hybrid cars are machines, they may be suitable for some people under some circumstances. It does appear to me that bigger vehicles benefit more from the technology than littler ones, so yeah a Denali might work well. It’s not the cars’ fault that pretentious professors drive them.

    2. Hey ! The modern man drives whatever he wants to drive, no matter what anybody says. You can take my Yaris when you pry it from my cold, dead hands; or when Toyota finally gets off their ass and releases a lithium-battery Prius for me to buy, whichever comes first.

      And besides, the common wisdom states that the size of a man’s car is indicative of how much of a need he feels to compensate for something. Ladies, take note: my car is tiny.

    3. Actually, it was my mother who taught me how to drive stick. Though I don’t need it to drive my Highlander hybrid.

  107. Modern Men prepare a fisk of a New York Times article, then stop and run the mandatory Monster Hunter Check, see it brilliantly done already, and delete the draft.

  108. Lileks said it best:

    15. The modern man has hardwood flooring. His children can detect his mood from the stamp of his Kenneth Cole oxfords.
    His children have been waiting for him to come out for years

    26. The modern man cries. He cries often.

    My dad told me there were basically two times that it’s OK for a man to cry: at his mother’s funeral, and at the end of Ol’ Yeller. I suspect his tongue was in his cheek when he said it, but I got the message.

  109. The only thing that should separate a “modern” man from a “primitive” man is the reliability of his sidearm

  110. So the modern man is a controlling man who gets to decide everything about the house and his spouse’s appearance, passive-aggressively indicates his mood to his scared family instead of clearly discussing any issues and addressing his moods in a rational way, assumes his family is made of incompetent people who can’t even plug in an electronic, doesn’t know how to use a rag to dry dishes and is thus inefficient, cares more about brand name than function (thus wasting money), and cries ineffectually instead of seeking a partnership with his spouse and a rapport with his children so as to face the world as a coherent family unit.

    Okay then. So glad my husband is a Neanderthal.

  111. Oh dear. The best hope is that this piece intended to be humorous. Though if it was, the fiskin’ was funnier. -sigh-

  112. I associate Mountain Dew drinking with programmers, college students, D&D players, and other people who stay up late, not big guys who pull cable. I agree that it’s stupid to tell people what food, drink, art, they should like.

    My depression-era grandmother put the tiny bits of soap in a nylon net and used it for handwashing, great for grease and oil.

    If you think your wife would appreciate receiving clothes (or shoes), that she didn’t pick out, it seems to me that knowing her size is a pretty obvious step. I don’t usually try that, but female relatives of mine have lamented not receiving a gift like that. If I wanted to know which makers run large or small, I’d ask the people selling the thing to me.

    My wife tends to forget to charge her phone. I often find it and plug it in. I call that looking out for one another. Teaching kids better habits is a different thing.

  113. Crying with laughter while reading this brutal fisking is also acceptable, boys.

    A+

    When I first read the original article, I seriously wondered what kind of fucked-up, inverted, unmanly bizarro world the author had clanging around inside his empty skull.

    He’s infamous now – the author of the ‘pajama-boy manifesto’.

  114. “The modern man still ambles half-naked down his driveway each morning to scoop up a crisp newspaper.”

    How does a pajama boy walk half naked down the drive way? Got the old kind with the butt flap hanging open?

    1. Isn’t having a driveway admitting that one is part of the evil, McMansion suburban Levittown conformist earth killing bourgeoisie?

  115. “New York Times”
    by Coach Jon McGuirk

    New York Times
    New York Times.
    You think you’re better than us?
    Us?
    U-S?
    USA?
    No Way.

  116. I liked the movie “Heat” when it came out, but I couldn’t have told you who the director was to save my life, and with the exception of some very distinctive and singular movies I tend to ignore who the Director is and focus on the end result. Saying you need all of a certain director’s movies, all of a singer’s albums or all of an author’s books is pretentious twaddle.

    Only an idiot assume they will love or hate something based on a previous and often singular work.

    1. Michael Mann is a really good director. I believe he also did Collateral, Miami Vice, and Last of the Mohicans. Basically, he does manly men being manly really well, which was why this doofus picking him was especially odd.

      1. It was part of his desperate attempt to pretend that despite his obsession with shoes, melon ballers, and being a weepy little spoon, he really is a manly man. Really he is! Reallyreallyreally! Because he /watches movies/ about men being manly (in which there’s ruckus involved, of course).

    2. Well if you put is extreme as that, then I suppose you are right. I know that authors who I like have written books that I didn’t like very well, but I think that if an author has written something that you love, then there is a better than even chance that you will at least like the next one. Once an author or a band establishes a good track record with me, I am pretty likely to just buy their next work without paying much attention to the reviews because that track record is probably a better judge of whether I will like it than some reviewer. The exception might be if the reviewer has a good track record with me. Sometimes you get burned, but it seems like the way to bet most of the time.

  117. I have to admit, I am a strict “no” on guns in the house; my partner suffers from depression. I don’t need such an easy out lying around.

  118. If my husband comes stomping into the house because he’s in a bad mood, and he leaves Danner boot prints (he’s a cop) on my freshly mopped floors (that I picked out to match my cabinets.) he’s going to be met with pissed off wife face.

  119. Thanks!
    I’m not a gun-toting hillbilly(I don’t even own a gun. Different situation here in Norway. I did learn to use the H&K G-3 in my RNoAF days, though, and was told I was ‘pretty decent’… ), I’m actually a pretty nice guy, but really… If I met that pajama wimp, I’d first give him a vedgie that would have destroyed his balls, if he’d had any, that is… Then I’d kick him in the face with my M77 marching boots. I can destroy cindercone blocks with them. I should be able to send his teeth into orbit. Which won’t matter as he probably doesn’t have the guts for eating meat anyways, and soup he can eat without…
    What does ‘douche’ mean? It’s NOT in my vocabulary… 😉

    1. Douche = feminine wash for female parts.
      Douchebag = a bag that holds douche.
      And it is a wonderful insult for people like this in America.

      🙂

  120. Aside from all the out and out bullshit, as a veteran of the Southeast Asian War Games of the ’60s, the one that got my back up the most was #8. I don’t know anybody who called them helicopters and if this pansy thinks that those who flew them into hot LZs were some gauche simpletons, maybe he should research the records and actions of some of those unsophisticated heroes like Maj. Bruce ‘Snake’ Crandall, Capt. Ed ‘Too Tall’ Freeman and my buddy Tony who’s on 100% disability for his experiences as an aviator back in the day.

    Nice job Fisk. I don’t know how you get away with the colorful language, but if it’s your site, I imagine you can do whatever you want. Thanks for providing a place to post comments on this as the original didn’t have a comment section or maybe it just sensed testosterone and put a pre-filter on it. Hooah!

    1. Excuse my sloppy prose. “Nice job Fisk” should have read “Nice Fisk job”. I was laughing so hard at parts of this that I almost fell out of my chair.

  121. You know who else liked Mountain Dew? Papa f***ing Hemingway.

    Or was it absinthe? It’s hard to tell from pictures.

    1. He also owned lots of guns. Just read the pages lovingly describing his Steyr-Mannlicher rifle in “Islands in the Stream”

  122. Nailed it! Thank God I married a real man!! I think if I had to get back into the dating world and all of the men were “modern men” I’d prefer to join a convent. I grew up around Carholic nuns and those were some tough biznitches! Way tougher than the modern man!!

    1. I love Duffelblog.

      For the people trying to defend that nonsense by claiming it was satire, if it was, it failed utterly at being funny. So either way it was worthy of mockery.

      1. I do believe it was meant to be satire but it tried to be too cagey and failed at being funny. It reflected neither truth nor fiction and in the end just kinda sat there, orphaned from whatever its intent was. The problem is that the ideology infesting America and the U.K. today is so nuts that irony is more or less dead. How do you top lunatics who believe clapping or Mark Twain produce PTSD? How do you top an ideology that asserts with a straight face that all men hate and oppress women using heterosexuality and have done so since before the rise of Conan the Barbarian, when things were apparently androgynous and Matriarchal?

        1. Easy enough. The ancient Greeks were right about the Golden Age, and the Feminists have it exactly backwords.

          Women are not human. They are alien beings originating from Mu Muscae, who have usurped the natural order.

          The apparent females of the animal and vegetable world are forgeries, cleverly constructed from wax.

  123. Mt. Dew was invented for moonshine. You know the shit that puts hair on your chest and makes little pants shitters like the moron that wrote this whine for mommy when they drink it straight. Real men can drink it straight w/o the dew, but the dew with the dew are designed for sippin, not slammin. A candy ass that has a ‘Crying Babby’ as their icon on the NYT wouldn’t understand these things.

    1. I am concerned about the my sons future. My offsprings peer competition will most likely be identified as Quantity rather than Quality but the peer competition Quantity certainly exists. For this reason, The Modern Man article should be encouraged and endorsed by all to the Quantity that is impressionable in such matters.

  124. You actually want a list of shit that the Modern man cares about? This ain’t it. For sure. Larry got it right for the most part.

    1. The modern man takes care of his business, and teaches his offspring to take care of themselves.
    2. The modern man protects his family, any way he sees fit.
    3. The modern man learns to do what is right.
    4. The modern man wears what the hell he wants to wear, within reason. I’m not going to a formal occasion in a tuxedo t-shirt.
    5. The modern man keeps up with his responsibilities and handles them.
    6. The modern man respects other men, and expects to be treated with respect as well.
    7. The modern man uses whatever tools he feels is necessary to complete a job. He improvises, adapts and overcomes.
    8. The modern man do what he enjoys, and will stomach what his wife enjoys if he doesn’t enjoy it, because he loves her.
    9. The modern man does something romantic occasionally for his loved one, because he can, not because he feels inclined to.
    10. The modern man isn’t afraid to be himself, and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.

  125. I saw this article a few days back and actually wished that someone would fisk it. I’m gratified that you took up the challenge. And for the record, a melon-baller with a wicked edge DOES have its uses in a self-defense scenario. However, it might be hard to explain the state of the critters various face-holes during the grand jury hearing though.

  126. I’m probably more of a “modern man” than our esteemed host… for instance, I do have a melon baller, but my wife bought it… also I love to cook, but if I were to compare favorably with the New York Times version, I think my ego would implode into a black hole of shame.

    Although the article somehow didn’t comment on this topic, despite being near and dear to the leftist heart, a real man holds all women in high esteem and does not treat them the same as men. A real man holds doors and gives up his seat and walks on roadward side of the sidewalk, and pulls out a chair, and women (in my experience) always appreciate it. Perhaps I don’t encounter leftist PC women in my life, but I consider that a blessing from God.

    Oh, yeah… real men love God.

  127. Note on SJNumbers- his post are rather amusing if you realize his speaking voice is likely the same as Randy from “A Toy Story”- kind of a modulated whining.

  128. That piece of meat isn’t fatty, and what kind of doofus burns a good piece of meat?

    You take that back!

    Some char is acceptable if you’re grilling, especially on any edge/dangly bits.

    It’s delicious, and you shoudl eat it.

    (But agreed, don’t use filet.

    Use a ribeye or a t-bone or a New York, ideally.

    I mean, “real men” eat any cut they want, sure.

    But if you want great flavor, you want fat.)

  129. The modern man…
    Get’s cuckolded by his spouse.
    Is completely ignored by regular people.
    Cowers in his seat until everyone leaves the theater before scurrying to the restroom to wash off the soda, and pull gummy bears out of his hair.
    Never gets a properly cooked, hair-free meal at a restaurant.
    Get’s his parking spot stolen and his car keyed, every time.
    Spend $5000 a year replacing expensive phones that his family doesn’t care enough about to keep track of.
    Will pay $1/oz of water if it has the word “alkaline” on the label.
    Closes his eyes while carefully pronouncing words that he thinks will make him sound smart.
    Is physically abused by his 12yo daughter.
    Is afraid of his maid.
    Thinks Twitter is important.
    Will get his ass beat if his spouse finds a small sliver of soap in the shower one more time.
    Was mugged twice at the same Wu-Tang concert.
    Had better not bring home the wrong type of lettuce when he goes shopping or he will get beat down, again.
    Lost his Kenneth Cole shoes the first time he got mugged at the Wu-Tang concert.
    Will be shot to death by an intruder.
    Can fit his balls in a melon baller. Both of them.
    Doesn’t need a shoehorn anymore because, well, Wu-Tang concert.
    Leaves flowers outside the bedroom door, hoping his wife will see them after she’s done banging the pool boy.
    Is always the little spoon at work because he’s the boss’s bitch.
    Will buy any crap being peddled by NYT or NPR.
    Buys 4 chargers a month because his maid throws them away. It’s okay though because nobody calls him or answers his calls.
    Doesn’t have have a wedding ring or use ATM machines because he’s been mugged 9 times, and been a victim of the knock-out game twice.
    Cries all the time, except when he’s getting a beat down because he doesn’t want something to cry about.
    Only dances for his boss, while wearing a dress.

    1. “Will pay $1/oz of water if it has the word “alkaline” on the label.”

      That was a rather caustic comment, though I don’t think it was a lye.

    1. Um… except if it was, then it failed utterly at being funny… you realize… and thus is still worthy of mockery… right?

  130. “The modern man listens to Wu-Tang at least once a week.”
    WTF is a Wu-tang?? Man will listen to Poon Tang…that’s a given. Especially if there’s a chance for it.

  131. Best comments section i have ever read. Making me cry with laughter in the Blood Bank at Cooper Hospital.

  132. >Besides, do you know what manner of man drinks Mountain Dew? Coal miners and Boyd Crowder. Men like your uncle Jack, who can bench press like 400 pounds because he pulls industrial electrical cables at construction sites all day, drink Mountain Dew.

    I thought Mountain Dew was for fat gamers rotting their lives
    away in their parents’ basement.

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