Masculinity

Masculinity is fantastic, it is the ultimate opiate of the masses, well the male masses anyway. It is an excuse to get away with everything you enjoy which is normally considered disgusting or anti-social. It provides us with a new way of glorifying ourselves once we have lost our ability or desire to attract young women. This can happen for one of two reasons, firstly we grow up and find relationships with wonderful women who complete our souls -like I have and secondly we develop beer bellies- like I have.
It is important to celebrate masculinity, not in a counter acting of feminism sort of way, but in a kind of keep yourself content and find life’s simple pleasures way. For this reason I have compiled a guide to being masculine. This is not a guide to being a man, for I’m sure women can enjoy their masculine side too and I actively encourage them to try. So here goes, follow these six rules and you will find simple pleasures in the most mundane aspects of life, coz that’s wot men do, that is.

1) Admire your work
It doesn’t matter what the work is. It could be building a wall, chopping wood, putting up a tent, or even girly stuff like cooking dinner or applying make up, but it is instantly transformed into a burly, manly, grunty spectacle if you stand over it, preferably with mates, drinking a beer and nodding triumphantly making occasional inaudible sounds. This works even, and sometimes more, if you’ve done a total half arsed job and are still prouder than Noel Edmonds mum when Deal or no Deal hit it big.

2) Barbecuing in the Rain
Have you ever seen Gordon Ramsay do this? Standing in the garden in the pissing rain trying to keep the fire going so you can enjoy two burnt sausages and a lamb chop while trying not to kill yourself by inhaling the smoke that’s trapped under your manly Golf Umbrella? No? Of course you haven’t. Coz he’s a poof. Real men don’t give a toss if they get wet as long as they provide sustenance, albeit in charred form, to their family and friends in the true hunter gatherer tradition. Bonus points for managing to turn the chops while holding a beer in one hand and an umbrella in the other.

3) Announcing Your bowel movements
This practice, perfected by Ricky Tomlinson’s portrayal of Jim Royle, is not only manly, but immense fun. It ranges from the subtle act of tucking a newspaper under your arm, moves on the comedy analogies of “Having a chat with an Arab- Mustafa crap”, “Dropping the kids off at the pool” and “having an Ertha Kitt”, and finishing with the afterthought method of “oooh, I’d leave it a while lads/love/nan (delete as appropriate)”
Being proud of the huge and superior dumps your body can produce is what separates men from boys. Men like to create things, to make things happen, and defecating is one that a man makes all by himself.
Variations of this include talking about needing to use the facilities: Touching Cloth, Turtles head poking out or Baking some recycled meat loaf are all acceptable, but off the cuff imagination wins here.
And remember, farting is like foreplay, so don’t neglect it!
4) Dancing Badly
This is one of those things that don’t appear manly until you analyse them heavily. Dancing is not manly. Fact. Dancing has been referred to a vertical prelude to a horizontal act, and that’s not very masculine, foreplay is totally gay. But dancing is a skill, and those serious about their skills are insistent that they do it well. Doing something badly is the polar opposite of the point. Dancing badly is anti-dancing. Its like making a satanic sacrifice in a church, a child minder who has a penchant for losing children or a Samaritans counsellor telling people that life is shit and they should end it all.
Not only is the act masculine, but it is a slap in the face for all that is not masculine. Furthermore it is comical and real men rely on charm and humour rather than face cream and €75 Haircuts. It is also a far more manly act than not dancing, because no one likes a stick in the mud who refuses to have fun. Real men grab the bull by the horns and have a go at anything with a complete disregard for actually being able to do it. That level of confidence is manly. It helps that you put on a pseudo-sex face that implies that you are mates with Hugh Hefner but you call him “virgin face” as a friendly nickname. See the beauty of this comes from making yourself look serious, which adds to the effect. Be the life and soul of the party.
Men are proud, so get up and dance, but for god’s sake, don’t dream of doing it well, you’ll never score that way.

5) Not reading the instructions
This applies to everything from flat pack furniture to getting directions, which includes sat nav, in fact ignoring sat nav is paramount to cementing your position in the annals of masculinity. The only thing sat nav should ever be used for is setting false coordinates and making the voice on it say hilarious things like “Go up cock lane (Broxbourne, Herts.)” and “go down Bum alley (these’s bound to be one somewhere)” and then driving to your mates house to show them.
When comes to cooking you may never follow instruction, an why would you need to, because all you have to do with anything edible is put it on the barbecue, wait until a reasonable shade of black and then savagely consume with disregard for health and safety washed down with a beer or three.
When it comes to furniture you must only use the instructions for stopping beer spillages. The furniture itself must be hammered and mashed together in something that resembles the picture on the box. Modifications can be made, coz what do Ikea know anyway. But the most importantly, don’t do things perfectly. Ever. Here’s the secret, but don’t tell your missus. If you do things well, she will make you do it more often, and when it comes to furniture you’ll never stop. Not only is it time consuming, but its also expensive. Which means less time and money for the vital things in life: Beer and Playstation.

6) Knowing stuff, even if you don’t
Three words synonymous with MDD (masculine deficiency disease) are “I don’t know”. Men never don’t know and always have to take a confident stab at the answer, even if its ridiculous. I’m so confident in my non-knowledge that I’ve even made up a disease to suit my ranting. In fact ask me anything right now. In you head. I bet I’ll know it. Go on. Got it? Ok right. That is a juxtaposition of two previously independent elements bridging new gaps and breaking previous constraints the original subject had. See, I told you I knew.
Ron Burgundy highlighted this level of masculinity when informed the girl from married with children that san diego meant “whales vagina”. Which, if any body asks me, it does.
Someone once asked me what the thermal bridging factor of a cavity wall was. So I told them. Confidently. I have no idea what it actually is, but the strength of my conviction was enough for that chap. He’ll probably forget pretty soon, but the next time he’s asked he will confidently make up and answer. He might say “cavity wall? Easy, that’s 2.3”, he might say “Cavity wall? Easy, that’s the Franco-Prussian war” either way he’ll be hugely satisfied with his ability to completely make shit up and appear knowledgeable.
False knowledge can even be used to reinforce extra masculinity. I often pretend to know about stuff like hunting, guns, chopping down trees, reversing trucks around a corner and deep sea fishing. None of which I’ve ever done. But if you ask me, I’m happy to help.

Advertising....am I a slave?

It is widely known that advertising is a watered down version of a company executive on his/her knees begging you to buy their crap. Ads, especially on television, are literally a tool to invade your home and shove their product down your throat. Which would be good if they were effective, but I honestly can’t see why the nonsense that ads come out with encourages people to give their money away by the bucket load. Take Kingsmill for example. Their tagline is “love bread, love kings mill”. Really? Does anyone actually love bread? Unless its some kind of posh gourmet bread, I really don’t see it. Generic crap in a plastic bag is not something anyone could love. It’s a strong emotion, and brand loyalty is taken to the extreme. And anyway, if someone could actually “love” a cheap sundry product then they must lead a depressing life, which isn’t really the consumer you should be aiming for, unless your advertising prozac of course, but prozac has a loyal consumer base anyway, so it doesn’t need to sponsor big brother, or run a Bluetooth text campaign.
Sports companies are some of the worst, they bend the realms of possibility with the image conscious campaigns that baffle innocent shoppers into buying the product in the hope that all the confusion will end. Adidas’ “impossible is nothing campaign” is a good example. Many a nights I’ve sat and watched the ads and thought “impossible is nothing…..except correct grammar.” Nike are no better, with the ambiguous just do it campaign. This leads them open to a lot of poetic licence to be taken with their instructions. For me “just do it” seems to be an instruction to steal their product, but
I can see how many could justifiably stand up in court and claim the corporate hegemony of Nike and their intrusive JDI campaign forced them do “it”, whatever “it” means to the individual. This gives a lot of leeway. It could be any of the following: Smoke Crack, Sell crack, Eat Burgers, Run over grannies, cut your initials into your patients when performing surgery on them, download bestiality porn, park on a double yellow line and even avoid buying a TV licence. All of these are the fault of Nike. All of them and more.
I think of myself of a reasonably rational human being and I don’t think I’m particularly influenced by branding, but maybe its hard to ignore. I once, when living in the UK, watched the Army recruitment ad with a laptop on my knees and without thinking typed armyjobs.co.uk into the address bar. It was weird. I momentarily became a complete tool of the advertisers. And for something I would never in a million years buy into. Seriously. Apart from the fact that I’m opposed to militarism, I would never, even if I thought the army were a great idea, actually do a job that involved people trying to kill you. And this was in the time of the bloody Iraq war. Bloody hell.
Try to notice the effect ads have on you the next time the tv show ends and the remote isn’t close to hand. Its scary. I have to stop writing now, because I suddenly have the urge to go and buy some Cilit Bang. But don’t worry. I’m not going to be a whore to consumerism. I’m going to poison myself with it. Haha Barry Scott, you’ve just lost a customer!

Beards are awesome!

Beards are awesome. Seriously. I’ve got one and I’ve never had so much fun in my life. It started when I was twenty, when I was travelling with work and went through a bit of a cash flow (maybe homeless would be a more appropriate term) problem, so I lived off a bare minimum and luxuries like razors were deemed surplus to requirements. It began with stubble of necessity, and developed into a beard of wonder. It was so cool. I smoked roll-ups at the time and I got the stage where my beard was off such a stage where I could hide five fags in it. Needless to say nobody ever accepted my offer of a cigarette in that period. I was saving mega bucks because of my beard!
Nowadays I still have the beard, only more trimmed since I’ve had to enter a world that doesn’t allow me to go barefoot on a day to day basis, but the effect of a bead is still awesome. Not only does it allow me to stand out from a crowd, but it also gives me a vital source of static electricity should I ever come across an appropriately placed balloon. I currently work in the (lower, shitty-wage, end of) the sustainable energy business and my face is one of the biggest renewable technologies known to man. I should get a government research and development grant.
Beards are also a fantastic tool for sex also. Apart from the fact they make people look totally badass, they also give beard rash to girls. Every man wants to leave his mark on a girl, and with a beard, the lucky lady will know she’s had the benefit of good beard-love.
Furthermore, beards make you safer when risking those journeys out in public. I learned this from my father. Beards make you look more mature, more sensible and evidently harder. No one wants to mess with the guy with the beard, coz he just don’t care, he’ll come at ya like a grizzly bear, yeah! Which is handy when you’re a peace loving chap like myself.
The ability to grow a proper beard is one of the manliest things known to man. Along with taking a very large book to the toilet to announce to the world that your going to drop a monster log, and having the ability to slouch on a chair and balance a full can of beer on your belly. Yes beards are a badge of honour, and only those who have ever had the bushy face feeling will ever truly know. So lets honour famous beard wearers! Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Santa Claus, Bill Oddie, Jeremy Beadle, Noel Edmonds, ZZ top and even wannabes like Craig David and Justin Timberlake and all those little boys who at one stage aspire to be like me and my comrades! Reach for the furry faced dream. Show your masculinity in a way that only facial hair can! Wait… what’s that you ask? Moustaches? Sorry, the club is full.