Miscellaneous Links 2009 - The Re-Vengeance

[Cotigo]

In other news, Rob's latent homosexuality is expressing itself in new, horrifying ways!  More at 11.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

... it's like Village People meets Swiss golfing clubs meet the Masons. Embarrassing is one hell of an understatement.

[metroid composite]

... it's like Village People meets Swiss golfing clubs meet the Masons. Embarrassing is one hell of an understatement.

Wait, you haven't seen Bearforce One before?  It's all over the place in the LGBT community up here.  Fun song.  Their other videos are entertaining, too.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It makes a very interesting overlay for Fallout Online's gameplay, I'll say that much.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

... it's like Village People meets Swiss golfing clubs meet the Masons. Embarrassing is one hell of an understatement.

Wait, you haven't seen Bearforce One before?  It's all over the place in the LGBT community up here.  Fun song.  Their other videos are entertaining, too.

I'm not very into the LGBT community in general, so I'm sorta out of the loop.

[Shale]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090203887.html

Redskins fans who can't afford to pay thousands of dollars for their season tickets anymore get sued for tens of thousands of dollars by the Redskins front office.

Edit: http://www.the-isb.com/?p=2143
Inglourious Wizerds.

[Dhyerwolf]

I hope that this gets around enough to negatively impact the Redskins ticket sales. It's ridiculous to make someone pay $200,000 for tickets 6 years into the future. The Redskin spokeperson sounds pretty horrid, especially in regards to saying the person who had to lay off 20 people just didn't want to pay for his tickets.

[Grefter]

I will just put this in the right topic.  Why the shit wasn't that IotD?

"The Washington Redskins routinely works out payment plans and alternate arrangements with hundreds of ticket holders every year," Donovan said. "For every one we sue, I would guess we work out a deal with half a dozen."

Warm and fuzzy.

[Dhyerwolf]

It's more assholish than idiotic.

[Grefter]

Signing a 10 year contract for fucking football tickets is though.

[superaielman]

Dan Snyder is a scumbag. He (Along with the Jets and a few other teams like the Patriots) do delightful things like sign players to massive free agent contracts in the offseason and then cry poverty and enforce furloughs and layoffs on office employees.

[Shale]

For those who don't know, incidentally, teams like the Redskins, who sell enough season tickets to fill their stadium completely, maintain waiting lists of thousands of people who want seats. The odds that they wouldn't have been able to re-sell those tickets for the season are about as high as the odds of me growing wings.

[Grefter]

You don't understand, they are seeking returns on damages and protecting their own interests.

Edit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhy7JCOVqys

Lore.

[Sierra]

Ahaha. I was hoping it would lead into that song when he said the opening line. I was not disappointed.

[superaielman]

I was not disappointed.

First time that's been said about anything related to Voyager.

[Dunefar]

The upshot to all of this: Fuck Dan Snyder.

[metroid composite]

http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/08/28/the-menaissance-and-its-dickscontents/
Excellent article on gender roles; worth reading all the way through.

http://www.mtc.ca.gov/news/info/movies/bay_bridge_video_9-07.htm
Time lapse view of bridge construction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDOYN-6gdRE
(video) Autotune the News #8.

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/
Images of Mars.

[superaielman]

http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/08/28/the-menaissance-and-its-dickscontents/
Excellent article on gender roles; worth reading all the way through.

Wait what?

Without even knowing what or why it was, I was heavily influenced by gay culture, which provided me, and many other straight young men, a wide variety of templates for manhood that are at once unmistakably masculine, playfully ironic, aesthetic, emotionally open, and happily sexual. You can be manly and care about shoes!!! I’ll confess that I used to periodically regret my heterosexuality because there seemed to be greater scope for constructing a distinctive and satisfying male identity within gay culture.

THE GAYS ARE EMOTIONALLY OPEN AND NON STEREOTYPED LET ME GO MAKE AN OVERARCHING ASSUMPTION ABOUT AN ENTIRE SUBCULTURE

But most of us have not yet given up on oppressively restrictive, strongly normative conceptions of hetero masculinity. That, I submit, is what stands in the way of a real, um … renaissance for men.

Mmm yes clearly men embrace a standard of masculinity that is completely wrong, clearly these white males suffer greatly and can only overcome their emotional traumas with a dose of 'the gay', as he's implying. What the fuck? *Reads other columns of his*

The challenge that Frey poses to Zengerle is this: Even if it could be shown that citizens legally open-carrying firearms significantly increase the probability of an assassination attempt (I am skeptical), it might not be worth the cost to add resources to increase presidential protection. Indeed, Frey finds that politicians are already overprotected. So the presence of citizens with guns may do nothing more than slightly reduce the extent of overprotection.

....

Anyway, I’m pretty sure this attempt to be rational on the subject of privately-owned guns near the president is in vain. If we make a Venn diagram of the set of people for whom guns are bewitched totems of death and the set of people for whom the president is a majestic, semi-divine symbol of national identity, I think we’ll see a fat overlap.

Clearly any concerns about people carrying high powered rifles near the president of the united states is overstated, our politicans are already overprotected! How can someone be literally so wrong on everything at once?

I’m Will Wilkinson, a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington,

Never mind. Libertarian politican/writers, could you kindly stop being such bad jokes? Thanks!

[metroid composite]

Without even knowing what or why it was, I was heavily influenced by gay culture, which provided me, and many other straight young men, a wide variety of templates for manhood that are at once unmistakably masculine, playfully ironic, aesthetic, emotionally open, and happily sexual. You can be manly and care about shoes!!! I’ll confess that I used to periodically regret my heterosexuality because there seemed to be greater scope for constructing a distinctive and satisfying male identity within gay culture.

THE GAYS ARE EMOTIONALLY OPEN AND NON STEREOTYPED LET ME GO MAKE AN OVERARCHING ASSUMPTION ABOUT AN ENTIRE SUBCULTURE

Um, what?  There's at least 5 major gay subcultures that I can name offhand, ranging from very similar to heterosexual males to Bears to beefcakes to flamers and so on.  I'm only really aware of one or two heterosexual male cultures.  So...yes, it seems perfectly reasonable that gay culture would provide a wider spectrum of templates for masculinity, since there seem to simply be more subcultures.

Frankly, I find the fact that you're arguing otherwise kinda weird.  When is more selection bad?

But most of us have not yet given up on oppressively restrictive, strongly normative conceptions of hetero masculinity. That, I submit, is what stands in the way of a real, um … renaissance for men.

Mmm yes clearly men embrace a standard of masculinity that is completely wrong, clearly these white males suffer greatly and can only overcome their emotional traumas with a dose of 'the gay', as he's implying. What the fuck? *Reads other columns of his*

Again, I'm confused at your objection here.  In the reverse direction I know quite a few women who want to get married, get pregnant, and be a stay-at-home mom and do that with their life.  It's actually very common in certain regions, and there's nothing wrong with that template.  Where you do get a social problem is if all women are expected and pressured into acting this way (as was the case in the 50s).  Quite a few women will be okay with this, but other women will not.

Similarly, not all men are comfortable in the heteronormative definition of masculinity.  This isn't calling the heteronormative definition wrong, in fact for a number of men it will still be the right fit; just not all men.

[superaielman]

Again, I'm confused at your objection here.  I know quite a few women who want to get married, get pregnant, and be a stay-at-home mom and do that with their life.  It's actually very common in certain regions, and there's nothing wrong with that template.  Where you do get a social problem is if all women are expected and pressured into acting this way (as was the case in the 50s).  Quite a few women will be okay with this, but other women will not.

Similarly, not all men are comfortable in the heteronormative definition of masculinity.  This isn't calling the heteronormative definition wrong, in fact for a number of men it will still be the right fit; just not all men.

I have absolutely no objections to the idea of different gender roles, with whatever men and women choose to do. That isn't what makes the column bad. The broad stereotyping that the author engages in sucks.

Many men aren’t angry and confused because they don’t know what women want. They’re angry because they want what their fathers or grandfathers had, and they can’t get it.

His stereotyping of the entire hetero male culture as just wanting a stay at home wife is the problem. He is basing this stereotype off another writer who is quoting such stellar sites as no marriage.com.  He backs this breathtaking assumption up by then praising/talking about another large subculture that can only really be labeled by sexual preference and covers a vast array of things.

[Grefter]

I have absolutely no objections to the idea of different gender roles, with whatever men and women choose to do.

The issue there would be with gender roles existing.  These are social roles that gender has no merit in determining who should be doing what and who is best at what.

That said the article isn't without its flaws.  Splitting Masculinity into 5 subcategories instead of say 2 isn't really an improvement.  Gender is naught but a social construct.

Also the comments provide the funnies.

Very good post. I don't understand why asking a woman if she likes getting flowers is considered so anxiety- inducing, while the previous norm of a man being responsible for the entire household's income- and being considered a major loser if he needed to ask for extra income from his marriage partner- should be considered less so.

Because he wants to be fucked tonight and if he gets it wrong it isn't happening.  Retard.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

The thing is, straight dudes don't usually conform to subcultures based on what we like to put our dicks in. We find ours somewhere else. A lot of the whole gay subculture thing amounts to "letting your sexual orientation define your entire identity." Then again, "straight dude" is apparently the one social group whose members don't generally think of themselves as a group.

[Dark Holy Elf]

THE GAYS ARE EMOTIONALLY OPEN AND NON STEREOTYPED LET ME GO MAKE AN OVERARCHING ASSUMPTION ABOUT AN ENTIRE SUBCULTURE

There's some truth behind the stereotype, at least? I mean, if you asked me whether "unmistakably masculine, playfully ironic, aesthetic, emotionally open, and happily sexual" sounded more like an ideal of homosexual masculinity or heterosexual, I would have to say I associate it more with the former (which is too bad, since that sounds great to me). The author is basically saying he is thankful for growing up around such culture, which does seem to have originated from "gay culture".

(As mc observed, it is one of several different "gay cultures" to boot.)

[metroid composite]

A lot of the whole gay subculture thing amounts to "letting your sexual orientation define your entire identity."

I really can't think of anyone I know where their entire identity is determined by their sexual orientation.  If anything, people's identities seem to be defined more by their job/education than anything LGBT-related.

Then again, "straight dude" is apparently the one social group whose members don't generally think of themselves as a group.

Really depends where you live.  I have a friend who grew up somewhere in the south.  He wasn't into cars.  Several of his peers concluded that he must be gay because he wasn't into cars (after all, all the other boys in the school were into cars).

Though in terms of "group that doesn't think of themselves as a group"--yes most majorities are like that.  There's a Black Broadcasting Network.  There's no White Broadcasting Network.  I've seen people complain about this, to which the response is usually "uh, dude?  See those other 66 channels?  Those would be the white networks."

[Anthony Edward Stark]

A lot of the whole gay subculture thing amounts to "letting your sexual orientation define your entire identity."

I really can't think of anyone I know where their entire identity is determined by their sexual orientation.  If anything, people's identities seem to be defined more by their job/education than anything LGBT-related.

Then again, "straight dude" is apparently the one social group whose members don't generally think of themselves as a group.

Really depends where you live.  I have a friend who grew up somewhere in the south.  He wasn't into cars.  Several of his peers concluded that he must be gay because he wasn't into cars (after all, all the other boys in the school were into cars).

Though in terms of "group that doesn't think of themselves as a group"--yes most majorities are like that.  There's a Black Broadcasting Network.  There's no White Broadcasting Network.  I've seen people complain about this, to which the response is usually "uh, dude?  See those other 66 channels?  Those would be the white networks."

Eh, maybe it's a byproduct of not being from the South, which is a shithole. Anyway, as far as the subculture thing goes, if you are "conforming to a gay subculture" that is, by definition, allowing your sexual orientation to define you. Just like conforming to any other kind of ______ subculture is you allowing ______ to define you.