Give it to the Sippican. I hate him for the things he makes me feel small for not doing, but that seems to be a pretty common way to feel towards people who make sense - and furniture. Behind every dovetailed drawer sits a huffy elitist, I've always said. Or at least I might start saying, depending on the backlash.
I'll be coy for a minute and pretend it's his new masthead that has inspired me to put him back in my blogroll, but honesty prods me to admit it is actually this list, which he has published before. Can I do them all? Maybe. Have I tried them all? No, sir. What's my point? Lists of the like abound. "How to be a real man," or some such plan. His makes a hell of a lot more sense (and I actually believe he has done them all) than the ones that claim you're not a real man until you've changed the rear main seal on a '65 Skylark in under an hour, in the mud, without a jack. But I still say beware of most of these lists, folks. You'd be better off getting the entire DVD set of "Dirty Jobs" and taking note of the fact that its humble host and his earnest guests are neither overflowing with opinions, nor built like underwear models.
I have rarely looked on one of those lists without first feeling momentarily unmanly for having accomplished so little of it, and then thinking it was probably compiled by someone who has done few of the items on it, but instead was constructing some catalog of chores, the doing of which he thinks would make him feel more manly, if only he could muster up the courage to admit that he didn't know how to do it. You have to have never done something before you can ever do it, and most men aren't willing to offer up the fact that they don't know how. Learn when it's ok to admit that you don't know something, fellas, it's pretty manly. Just never admit it to a woman (unless you have already slept with her or aren't planning to) or we pull your card, pronto. And don't try to substitute by doing an hour's quiet research on the internet and then making 38 trips to the Home Depot in order to install a doggie door. Lame.
I might make a list, and if I did, a more honest title would be "Things I do that Make Me Feel like a Man." But that's just for me, and offers no real guidance or advice, except passively. And if part of the measure of a man is, as I suspect, the ability to recognize good advice for both taking and giving, then I would have to be mighty careful about what I put on it. Anything less considered would lack authority, and you certainly need to be able to muster some of that up at the right time if you want to claim manhood.
Without further ado, my list:
1. Install a doggie door.
Get crackin'.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Seattle Needs a Eulogy
There is sunlight early in these upper latitudes. It had to be early today in order to catch the USS John C. Stennis moving through the Sound to port in Bremerton. I was early, too, with a confused child in tow, taking us both to the rare and wonderful sight that is an aircraft carrier lined with sailors on its way through these coastal waters. We were a bit far from it to make out many details (I doubt the little one knew why I had her out there so early), but it was a stalwart and worthy vision just the same.
About a mile from where I stood to watch her glide so carefully and proudly through the sound, is an intersection of roads, all four corners of which are regularly populated with citizens loudly protesting America's activities across the world. Signs, pamphlets, and sheepish, vacant glares - even some epithets scribbled groundward in sidewalk chalk, as if to invoke the children in this sordid orgy - saying that we love some unnamed American vision which you have just returned from destroying. Your criminal odyssey pauses here, sailors, in this vapid, desiccated womb where the conflicting messages of "we support our troops," and "we curse their actions" are somehow allowed to stand side by side without rebuke. Welcome home, sailors, and don't be discouraged. I promise someone here loves you.
This city is rotten from the inside, at its heart, where the real disease takes hold. Like there's a wellspring - but not for water - for hungry boll weevils, and our common sense is cotton to them.
The rot takes hold early where the lessons of the fathers should be: The left lane is for passing. Protect your women. Keep not too many things, but of the things you do keep, keep them clean and well-maintained. When you make things, make them well and careful. Be respectful and courteous, even if it goes unnoticed - but never if it goes unappreciated. This America is yours - work for it.
Where those lessons are bereft, smaller lessons move in and have all the heft of dry rot on a swatch of lace, having been eaten through by the weevils: The road is yours to do with as you please. To protect your women is to presume superiority, so leave them take care of themselves. Keep many flimsy and shoddy things, and waste no energy in keeping them kept. Make things if you must, but do it quickly and leave your heart out of it. There is no one more important than you - insist that all others appreciate that. This America is someone else's, and that person is long dead - work against it.
Destruction is not advancement. To rebuild can be a setback. Let us not confuse the definitions of "progressive" and "bellicose" as we try to make right in this place. Most of all, let us be careful to not wake every morning under the assumption that there is some right necessarily to be made. The sun is up and the day is long - we would be wise to do little more thinking than that.
About a mile from where I stood to watch her glide so carefully and proudly through the sound, is an intersection of roads, all four corners of which are regularly populated with citizens loudly protesting America's activities across the world. Signs, pamphlets, and sheepish, vacant glares - even some epithets scribbled groundward in sidewalk chalk, as if to invoke the children in this sordid orgy - saying that we love some unnamed American vision which you have just returned from destroying. Your criminal odyssey pauses here, sailors, in this vapid, desiccated womb where the conflicting messages of "we support our troops," and "we curse their actions" are somehow allowed to stand side by side without rebuke. Welcome home, sailors, and don't be discouraged. I promise someone here loves you.
This city is rotten from the inside, at its heart, where the real disease takes hold. Like there's a wellspring - but not for water - for hungry boll weevils, and our common sense is cotton to them.
The rot takes hold early where the lessons of the fathers should be: The left lane is for passing. Protect your women. Keep not too many things, but of the things you do keep, keep them clean and well-maintained. When you make things, make them well and careful. Be respectful and courteous, even if it goes unnoticed - but never if it goes unappreciated. This America is yours - work for it.
Where those lessons are bereft, smaller lessons move in and have all the heft of dry rot on a swatch of lace, having been eaten through by the weevils: The road is yours to do with as you please. To protect your women is to presume superiority, so leave them take care of themselves. Keep many flimsy and shoddy things, and waste no energy in keeping them kept. Make things if you must, but do it quickly and leave your heart out of it. There is no one more important than you - insist that all others appreciate that. This America is someone else's, and that person is long dead - work against it.
Destruction is not advancement. To rebuild can be a setback. Let us not confuse the definitions of "progressive" and "bellicose" as we try to make right in this place. Most of all, let us be careful to not wake every morning under the assumption that there is some right necessarily to be made. The sun is up and the day is long - we would be wise to do little more thinking than that.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
See You Soon
My workin' bone seems to be gotted lost somewheres, so I be driftin' round the Bend, anon. Bend Oh-ree-gone, that is. A spot o' bikin', a spot o' hikin', and a hole heap o' sittin' around with beer. Sundays' my comin' back day. I'll let you know how it did.
Mayhap on my comin' back, I be writin' a bit more than lately.
Happy 4th!
Mayhap on my comin' back, I be writin' a bit more than lately.
Happy 4th!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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