Will #MeToo Destroy Civilization?

Here in Austin there is a bird that has taken over the skyline. It's called a Grackle (Great-Tailed Grackle) and although when they mass in one area they're considered a nuisance, individually they are quite interesting. The male is bigger than the female and jet black compared to her brownish/grey.  To attract the female the male will squawk loudly, thrust out his chest and raise his wings to make himself look bigger, then circle around the potential mate in a frenzied dance.

In other words, it's pretty much the same way we males must go about meeting a woman.

As I've mentioned before, female humans are afraid to make First Contact, so it's all up to the males. However, it's more than just first contact, it's also pretty much the first move. That includes not just which way to take the relationship, but more importantly, the first move for sex.

The male must appraise the situation, the woman's mood, her thought process and decide if tonight's the night. Also as I’ve blogged before, this can be a challenge for we guys get some odd signals or signs from females. They are often difficult to decipher.

I bring this up not to rehash old blogs (although I like to link back to them) but because of recent events in the news. The #MeToo “thing” as well as the Joe Biden shoulder touching incident.

First off, let me point out that Biden is one of those touchy-feely types.  He's like your cheek-pinching aunt on steroids, or the Hollywood starlet smoocher wannabe who plants fake kisses on everyone she meets. Plus, he doesn't just touch females, but males too. There are countless pictures of him wrapping an arm around a male's shoulder or giving him a friendly hug.

So him just touching someone shouldn't be an issue. However, the response was over-the-top. Some women saw it almost on the level of assault. Luckily, not all believed that and recognized Biden for what he is (touchy/feely). But the #MeToo adherents came out in droves and pretty much did the modern day burning at the stake by attacking unrelentingly.

This attitude goes against what I mentioned earlier about First Contact. I've also mentioned before that some women take offense at males flirting. If males must be afraid of any contact, even the non-emotional greetings or lighthearted come-ons, then civilization could be imperiled.

Soon, men would fear for their lives if they attempted to convince that cute waitress out on a date. If they magically were able to get a date in the new #MeToo world, heaven forbid they seductively suggest she come back to his place. And the married man who craved a night of romance better set his sights instead on getting excited over a football game instead. For even if there were a change in how men approached a female, it'll be centuries before women evolve to the point where they might take responsibility for making that move.

On a positive note, at least it might solve the overpopulation problem.

Ahhh, James Thurber

We at The Thurber Brigade apologize if you believe this is taking things a little over-the-top.  It's sort of what we do though.  As noted before, we do not condone sexual assault of any type/level, but also think it's possible to go too far the other way too. If nothing else, just be thankful we didn't devolve the blog into another topic as we're prone to do in an attempt to hide the true reason for the blog. We just like being sneaky. 

The Story of Easter

Around 300 CE the Cardinal ran up to the Pope while in a most agitated state.  The Pope held up his hand in a calming manner to placate the worried man.

“Calm thyself Cardinal.”

“We have a crisis your excellency!” the Cardinal exclaimed.

“What crisis?”

“The people are dancing around naked and drinking heavily all in the name of Eostre!”

“Well, we can’t have that.  I have a plan though.  Go gather the people around and I will make a declaration.”

So, the Cardinal rushed off and after getting the people clothed and somewhat sober, convinced them to go and hear what the Pope wanted to tell them. 

“People there is a new holiday you should celebrate.  It is one that commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus.  This holiday will be heretofore known as Easter!” the Pope exclaimed.

The people mumbled amongst themselves and looked questioningly at the Pope.  “Easter?” That sounds suspiciously like our favorite time of the year when we celebrate Eostre,” one man said.

“Um, no, no, it’s not related to Eostre at all,” the Pope assured him.

 Monty Python would celebrate Eostre

“It seems strange to celebrate someone’s death,” another peasant said to the Pope.  “I mean, from the description your priests have told us in the past it sounds rather bloody.”

“Yeah, and that story they tell about Jesus sure sounds a lot like the story of Inanna and Horus,” anther person shouted.  “I mean, they were killed, went to the underworld and came back.”

“No, no, those stories are just myths. This story of Jesus is real. You can trust me,” the Pope said as convincingly as he could.

“We like Eostre though,” several others chimed in.  “We get to dance and drink, we paint eggs and carry around rabbits to celebrate the new spring and virility.”

“Well, you can still have eggs and rabbits,” the Pope said. 

“Can we dance and drink too?” a man at the back asked.

“Of course you can, although I think it best to keep your clothes on,” the Pope answered.

The people furrowed their brows and wrinkled their noses.  “We’re not sure about this holiday.”

“Oh, you’ll love it,” the Pope assured them. “You’ll have a great time.”

So the people decided to celebrate both holidays.  After all, the more holidays the better.  However, slowly but surely the Pope and his successors convinced them to just celebrate Easter. With time, he also got the people to calm down more and celebrate with less enthusiasm.

The church kept the eggs and rabbits, but got the people to dispense with the dancing and drinking. A small group of pagans didn’t like this turn of events and vowed to one day return the holiday to its more spirited nature. 

Slowly but surely the old Eostre followers have been stressing the eggs and rabbits.  So today you can actually find people telling stories of big rabbits hiding chocolate eggs. They sneakily got the church to offer sunrise services which celebrate an old solar celebration. Also, the Pagans convinced the Pope to base the time of Easter on the phases of the moon.  Although they haven’t been able to bring back the wild dancing (to a degree), but have had more luck with the drinking aspect with their Easter sales at liquor stores.

So whether you follow celebrations of Horus, Inanna, Eostre/Ostara or Easter we at The Thurber Brigade wish you a pleasant holiday.

 Ahhh, James Thurber

We at The Thurber Brigade apologize if this story sounds a little like our annual Christmas story.  We can't help that a certain religion co-opted several Pagan celebrations to try and win over the people. We also apologize to the serious religious types for making fun of the Pope, religion, myths, etc.  We don't regret it, nor doubt the above story has some basis in reality, but we apologize as we want you to continue to enjoy whatever holiday you celebrate. Cheers.

The Brigade Beer Blog

Sooner or later, it had to happen. Anyone who has followed my Twitter or FaceBook posts have noticed that I don't post selfies.  I post pictures of my books on an iPad that is sitting next to a beer.  Yes, I promote my books while simultaneously promoting some of my favorite places to hang out and their beers. 

Those places make their own beer. So, in other words, good beer.  Places like brew pubs or tap rooms (tasting rooms) at breweries.  Places that don't skimp on ingredients and in fact brag about those ingredients. If you ask them about a beer that interests you they not only let you sample it first, they may launch into a long speech about how it got made.

They are places where beer snobs such as myself feel at home.

When I travel, for meals I look for brew pubs so I can not only sample their beer, but experience the good pub grub they offer. I like to vacation where I can enjoy my hiking passion as well as hit beer festivals. So, I've been to the Great American Beer Festival a number of times. I’ve visited my favorite, the Oregon Brewers Festival, so often that I now also go to volunteer (can't drink while doing it, but they give you free tokens to get beer after you’re done).

So it was only a matter of time before I would feel obligated to blog about beer.  As a beer snob, it meant I'd also rant against Mass Produced Beer (Bud, Miller, Coors, et al).

Unlike the beer lovingly brewed at the above-mentioned places, Mass Produced Beer (MPB) has little taste, color, aroma or body. It is often brewed with inferior ingredients, as well as includes “things” that do not belong in beer.

Have you heard about adjuncts?  Adjuncts are ingredients that sound okay, but in effect are shortchanging beer drinkers. They are used to save the brewer money by using cheaper ingredients. For example, Bud uses rice as an adjunct while Miller uses corn.  In other words, instead of using all malt, they'll cut it with the adjunct so you get half the taste and body. It's why if you drink a good beer and then follow with an MPB it suddenly tastes like you are drinking water with battery acid mixed into it. 

My theory about why the MPBs began doing this is that shortly after prohibition ended, the brewers decided they needed to try something to make more money. Since the American public was thirsty for beer after a long drought they didn't notice that they were now missing out on taste.

After the brewers were safely on two feet and making money hand over fist they decided they didn’t need to go back to making a full beer. Instead, they decided to spend a little more on advertising and keep shortchanging beer drinkers.

I’m always noting to friends how the MPB have great TV ads, but lousy beer. They sound good, but taste bad.

German brewers came up with this same scheme centuries ago, but beer drinkers revolted. Urban legend says that some brewers lost their heads over this, but I have a feeling that’s just some beer drinker embellishing the story a bit (after a few beers). Politicians eventually got on board and passed the famous German Purity Law to prevent this catastrophe. The law states that brewers may only use four ingredients: water, barley, hops and yeast. 

Some MPBs also use other ingredients that you won't find in good beer. Strange ingredients like emulsifiers, corn syrup, and who knows what else?  Trying to find out what they add is like pulling teeth. Soon, like most foods in the US, they'll be forced to tell us what's in the beer.

Some MPBs use advertising to trick customers that their ingredients are not evil, I mean, less than beer pure. You have seen it and probably not noticed. Something like admitting one of the ingredients is rice, but downplay that it is used to produce a less tasty product.  They just mention it along with the other ingredients and hope you don’t question its inclusion. Similar to how your wife may mention something about the weather this weekend and under her breath mention that her mother is coming to visit. Go ahead, wrinkle your nose, it really is just as bad.

So if you have fallen for MPB’s ads and think you are getting a great product, then educate your taste buds to real beer.  Spend an extra dollar to purchase a beer with taste, aroma, body and color.  However, if you are a teenager and just want to get drunk behind the barn with your friends, well, go ahead and buy the cheap MPB (illegal in the US by the way) and leave the good stuff for us adults.

We at The Thurber Brigade wanted a much longer blog, one that included talking about different styles, types of hops, etc., but some of the non-beer drinking editors insisted we tame the length. Likewise, we could have mentioned more about adjuncts, emulsifiers, et al, maybe even been balanced and mention why MPBs include them, but hey, if they can spend billions on advertising lousy beer, they can afford to write their own blog defending lesser ingredients. Oops, sorry, got carried away again.

The Midwestern Mystique

Remember all those years ago when you were watching Johnny Carson and you thought how weird his accent sounded? Or more recently with David Letterman?

Of course not!

They sounded normal.  They enjoyed that Midwestern Mystique.

The Midwest is in the heart of the country and ranges from Minnesota to Oklahoma and from Kansas to Ohio (it can vary on who you ask). Admittedly, you might notice an accent up in Minnesota that sounds a little Scandinavian, but the rest of the region is pretty much non-accent. So the sound is plain versus the drawl in the South, to the nasal whine of New Jersey, etc. 

The Midwestern Mystique is more than just accent though. The attitude and belief systems are different. Not to promote my book (too much), but I play this up in “Writing Trash and Hunting Buffalo.”  In it the main character, a Hollywood gossip writer from the Midwest, bemoans having to be around the LA folk who he believes are obsessed with fame and fortune and seem almost whacky to his way of thinking.  Basically, it's Midwestern values versus Hollywood.

One of the big differences between Midwesterners and others shows up in their desire to avoid excessiveness. The Midwesterner is the guy drinking quietly in the corner at a party while his New Yorker girlfriend is hugging and kissing every person she runs into and barely knows. If a Midwesterner were to run into an acquaintance at a party, he'd nod and just say “hey.” A kiss on the cheek is only reserved for grandmothers, mothers and maybe a special aunt.

I remember when I released “Trash” I asked my folks to promote it to their friends. When I grilled them a month later, they said they didn’t bring it up to anybody.

“We didn't want to seem like we were bragging.”

Mommmmmmm, Dad, jeez. I finally got Dad to send an email to a few relatives telling about the book, but it was unlikely he said much more than, “Well, Jay wrote another book.”

Midwesterners are typically portrayed in movies and TV as either hayseeds or glass-wearing, shy folk (not nerds mind you).  If they tell someone from outside the region that they come from the Midwest they're likely to be perceived as coming straight from the farm. A good example is in “Star Trek IV” where Kirk tells a woman he’s from Iowa, and she later refers to him as “farm boy.”

This may be the reason that outsiders consider Midwesterners gullible.  However, it not because they are gullible, but that they are too trusting.  A perfect example of this is Kansas. Back in the old days, Kansas was a hotbed of populism.  In the 1890’s Mary Elizabeth Lease (the people’s Joan of Arc) lead a strong movement to help farmers who many believed were taken advantage of by Wall Street.

So these trusting Kansans trusted the Republican party when they moved in and claimed to represent the common man who struggled against the system.  Little did these trusting souls know that the GOP moved away from that mantra in the 1960s and actually became more in league with Wall Street than the common man. So Kansas has been solidly red for decades now, even though those same politicians were bleeding the state dry. 

As a child brought up in the Midwest (yeah, I lived in Kansas during grades school and junior high) I have to admit that I often adhere to the Midwestern Mystique and avoid excessiveness. 

I’d rather go hiking in the woods than rave at a loud party. I’ll choose to blend in to a crowd at a hockey game rather than wear some fancy clothes to draw attention at a bar.

Perhaps most telling, I like sitting home writing a blog while listening to “Kansas” on the stereo than making a scene at the latest hip night spot. 

 Of course I had to include a picture of John Brown.  It's required if you mention Kansas.  This picture is not only on a "Kansas" (the rock band) record album, but also is a gigantic mural in the capitol building in Topeka.  Although Southerners will tell you he's a vicious madman, Kansans see him in a much better light. 

Isn't She Attractive?

Quite a while ago in a blog I admitted I'm a “leg man.” I'm attracted to women with shapely legs. I attribute this to being a gung-ho jogger, and in fact give extra points to women who partake.  Of course, I got attacked by angry feminists who claimed I was too superficial. My counterpoint was that women were just as superficial as they admitted being attracted to a guy with money or star power (rock stars, etc.). 

Some of the feminists also stressed, vigorously, that I was sexist due to this attraction to the female form.  I summarily blogged about the difference between sexuality and sexism. Admittedly, that blog evolved into a rant about Trump, but you get the gist.

So yes, I’m attracted to the picture at the top of this blog because the woman has great legs. As has been discussed countless times in blogs, bars and bouts, er, conversations with the opposite sex, when you first meet someone, you have little to go on. You can't say you are attracted to the woman above because she has a great personality. You don't know that. You only have looks.

Of course, I guess you could postulate that maybe she does/doesn't have good taste in fashion. I'm more tempted to question her on whether she paid for her jeans in that condition, did she cut them up herself or did it happen due to wear and tear.

To me, it's so goofy that women—or men—buy something like that. I remember in my youth having jeans and patching them when they got holes. Admittedly it was partially a Sixties thing, but also common sense. You want to get your money's worth, so you patch the hole and keep on truckin'.

Of course, I was one of those who was brought up attending the Church of the Penny-pincher, and learned at the feet of Reverend MacFrugal.

So paying big bucks for clothing like above would certainly land me in Hell.  It doesn't make sense, nor cents. It's foolish and wasteful.  Maybe even shows a disdain for the common man who struggles to put food on the table and spends his/her money wisely and prudently.

It reminds me of going to a restaurant and seeing students there eating. Oh sure, we all need to eat, but when I was a student I lived on bologna and rice to avoid debt. My guess is that these kids have been given a credit card by their folks and have no sense of how much Dad, or Mom, have got to labor to pay the bills.

Likewise, I’ve been to countless music concerts and marvel that I see a lot of young people there.  Sure, when I was a student I would go listen to music, but it was always free shows, or else it was once a year event as it would wipe out my entertainment budget.  I doubt that’s the case of those I see at these things that cost upwards of $60 or more. No, I’m sure Mom and Dad are paying for it as well as the drinks, food and concert T-shirt that they all purchase.

And what’s with this new scooter fad?  Let’s say that it only costs one dollar for each trip (I’m sure it’s actually more). If the college student rides it to class and back each day, you are looking at a bill over $200 by the end of the semester.  My guess is they only think of the single dollar charge and can’t picture the true cost of extended use. Poor Dad.

Anyway, it drives me crazy that there are women who don’t even think about the cost of something, only the pleasure they’ll get out of said item.  I could never be attracted to someone like that.

 Ahhh, James Thurber

The Thurber Brigade apologizes for once again getting off topic. How this thing devolved into a rant about reckless spending we’re not sure.  However, why men are attracted to females is an important topic with many branches and we promise that sometime in the future we will really talk about attraction.  Maybe.