Rachel's manual of man codes

     Rachel Thompson, @RachelintheOC, is a very successful Amazon author who is currently working on a book themed 'Mancode'.  She has mentioned it in tweets, and it started me thinking about how differently men and women can think some times.
     I've known women like Rachel all my life.  They're attractive, smart, and hold men accountable, which makes them scary.  Being held accountable means we not only have to think about what we're doing, but also what we're saying.  They demand that we think in a higher gear than neutral, which gives us a headache.  As we age and learn, we become adept at not really listening unless key words pop up in the white noise that's passing directly through one ear and out the other.  Words like, "My mother is -", or just a single word like, "beer", or "sex".  Words that relate to comfort, gratification, food.  Men are very basic animals.
     Anyway, I started thinking about Rachel's mancode.  It sounds like she has a manual that explains men.  This is a frightening thing in the hands of a woman.  I don't have a manual.  I don't know a single guy who does.  As I've waded through the years, I've often thought a manual would have been nice to refer to while in the middle of experiencing a testosterone disaster, or saying just about the worst thing I possibly could to smooth over something that I did.
     Man's code, concerning women, is not something that we (men) all got together and agreed upon as the coolest way to deal with women.  Women are actually the ones who instigated and formed the philosophy that we use to maintain a relationship that we can cope with, and hopefully understand, though understanding it isn't as important as coping with it. 
     About the time of puberty, when a budding young man discovers the wonders inside his pants, he should be able to reach down there one day and pull out a manual instead of what he usually pulls out.  The manual should be a publication of nature.  It would just bloom between our legs on our fourteenth birthday.  It would be a manual that justifies the degree of all the stupid things he's going to do according to the level of testosterone that poor sucker is carrying around, because from this moment on he's going to think in delusional realms, such as, seeing some beautiful woman smile in his direction and thinking, "She wants me, bad.", when in reality she was grimacing from the sun being in her eyes, or, (teenage reasoning), saying to his self, "I can take him.", when looking at any other male, when in reality he couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag.  Let's face it, male hormones are a curse that we must suffer through, and what we need from women is sympathy, their warm naked bodies pressed against us in understanding. 
      So, if nature was fair, when a boy in adventurous discovery thrusts his hand into his pants for his hourly check to make sure his gear hadn't gone anywhere, and pulls out a paperback manual, he would know that he has a guide that will explain why his brain will be working in direct harmony with his penis from this moment up to his death and possibly beyond.
     If we were a truly advanced species, there would be a second volume that would sprout from his crotch a few years later entitled, 'How to understand women and respond to the code they expect men to live by.'  Okay, not much of a title, but - I'm a man.
     Women think that men are about as sensitive as saw dust, but I'm here to tell you that isn't true.  We're just sensitive about different things.  I'll give you a for instance.
     I was out to dinner one night with three women.  One was my girlfriend, one my business partner, and one was another artist that I worked with.  The three of them had started talking about what rutting pigs men are with great enthusiasm.  I sat there quietly shoveling fettuccine Alfredo into my face and guzzling beer in acceptable to all males fashion, keeping my thoughts quiet, as my experience had taught me when in the face of danger, such as a group of women or any other preoccupied pack animal that has formed into a hunting party.
    These women were vicious and unbending as they thrashed my gender with their viper tongues and sliced us to pieces with their sharp words, laughing with malice at what they saw as our shortcomings and barbaric ways, completely ignoring the fact that I, a man, was sitting in their midst.
     I couldn't take it any longer.  My gender needed a spokesman and I rallied to the cause as any red blooded American male must do.
     I guzzled down the rest of my beer before speaking, and to show that men could be sensitive, civilized, even delicate, I covered my mouth before belching.  In a man's mind, that was a sensitive, thoughtful courtesy to the ladies.  In a group of men, nobody would care.
     "Excuse me, ladies.", I said.  "But you may not have noticed that I'm sitting here and you're talking about my gender, my planetary brotherhood."
     They all went silent for a moment, which I found remarkable from a group of women, before they burst out laughing and said, "Oh, John, we're not talking about you.  You're different."
     Different??  What did they mean, I'm different?  Am I not a member of my gender?  Am I a eunuch?  Are they insinuating that I'm gay?  Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.
     A threat to my manhood had been suggested.  The red flag of maleness raised in my subconscious.  I suddenly felt the hair on my body thickening, my arms stretched and knuckles dragged on the ground, my forehead sloped and eyebrow ridge thickened as my voice dropped two octaves and I said,  "Are you saying that I'm gay?"
     "No, no, of course not.  You're just different."  They assured me, but I wasn't assured.  I never did get a straight answer from them.  To this day, when I think of that night, a rattling of insecurity ripples through my manliness.  I had just experienced woman code, and didn't have a clue how to deal with it, or understand how they came up with it.  It was a thought process that could have been beamed down from the Orion galaxy, yet it came from my species.
      Mancode is pretty simple, really.  It's basically keeping a woman content enough to leave him alone with a beer when he's watching a game.  Men's lives are pretty easy these days.  Imagine what our ancient forefathers went through.
      Better yet, imagine the women.  Women are who really created civilization.  Men were quite content going out on hunting parties with the boys and trying to jump women when they were bent over picking wild vegetables.  A warm fire in the cave at night and what ever fermented drinks they had in those days, and I guarantee they had something, was fine with them.  Booze was probably the only thing that cave man invented without women's influence.
     I figured out the powerful influence that women had on civilization when I shared a cabin with a buddy of mine in the Santa Cruz mountains of California.  This was a man's cabin.  It didn't have any electricity, running water or a restroom.  We were content to do our cooking on a wood burning stove, which works very well, by-the-way.  We did build a water system from an underground creek and put a faucet and sink in the kitchen, but that was all we really needed for convenience.  We had kerosene lamps for light, which is all a man needs, since putting on make-up isn't in our routine - - well, most of us.
     When ladies came over and wanted to use the restroom, we pointed to the shovel with the toilet paper roll on the handle near the back door.
     "Take that shovel and toilet paper - go out the back door about one hundred feet and you will see a fallen redwood tree.  Dig a hole  and hang your butt over the tree."  Sometimes I couldn't resist and would add,  "Oh, and remember to watch out for snakes."  That's something that only men would think is funny - totally against the woman code, and a completely stupid thing to say, because not a single woman ever used our shovel.  Not even after we explained the beautiful view they would get of Lexington Dam and the bay area from where they sat.  What was even worse, is they never spent the night and would usually leave soon after the rest room request. 
     We decided if we were going to get women to spend the night, we needed a restroom, and not just any restroom, like a nice simple outhouse, which is easy to make, but something nice - civilized.  Women had to walk into this room and subconsciously see that we were not just a couple of horny mountain men swinging through the trees like a couple of apes, which is exactly what we were.     
     We designed a bathroom with a tub on a wide redwood platform, flushing toilet, a sink encased in redwood with brass handles, stained and beveled glass windows all around the room and even planned a mirror over the sink that was actually a glass mirror instead of a metal sheet. 
     We went to work, and what a project.  Half way through it I realized that we were creating a civilized setting - a room from scratch, that wasn't just functional, but had ambiance, art - class.  We weren't doing this for us, we were doing it for women, and not just any woman, but all women who came our way.  That's when I came to the realization that this is how civilization started. 
     Fifty thousand years ago a woman said, "Look, Ork, this is the way it is.  If you ever intend to get laid again, you had better build me a bathroom with running water and a flushing toilet.", and now we're so far removed from our natural setting by civilization, we no longer know what we're missing.
     Even when we long for the good old days, we're not even sure what we're longing for because the trail back has been erased by woman code, and now it's substituted with a sports event on a box in an enclosed room where women can be sure that we are under control, and if they wish to display their power over us, they simply stand in front of the TV and pull a robe open and say, "I'm your sports event now, big boy."  Okay, maybe it doesn't always work that way, but it always works on me.
     We have civilization as women deemed it should be.  Men may have built it, but it was a woman's idea.  We live in a world created by woman code.
     So, I thank Rachel for giving me something to write about tonight.  It's been fun.  You can find Rachel's newest book, A Walk in the Snark, at, http://t.co/4Hig4CO.  I hope I have that right, but if I don't - hey, I'm a man.
    
    

    






























All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.

Doomsday ramblings of a madman

     This is May 20th.  It's about 9:30 PM, and if you believe it, two and a half hours from now the last good day ends - well, it ends for the believers.  The rest of us sinners - yes, I'm afraid I happily sin with free abandon.  Anyway, the rest of us sinners have to ride a roller coaster planet until August.  I can't remember what happens to us.  Whatever happens, we're fucked. 
     The good guys - the believers, will be in heaven.  I'm not sure what heaven is exactly.  But, my childhood indoctrination gave me a picture of an old, very clean village with streets made of gold - gold bricks, probably.  It sounded extremely well managed - sort of like an army base.  I can remember wondering who ran this well organized place?  Was it all Republicans?  But, foolish me, I then realized it had to be God.  Not just any God, but one bad ass God.  Mess up and you're out of here - back to that rock and roll planet with all those sinners.  HELL!!  Scary shit, and it has been since John the Baptist predicted the end of the world.  Of course, he thought it would happen in his life time, and maybe it did for him.  He died.
     In my life time alone I can recall a rapture days.  It seems there was one in the 70's, one in the 80's - they must go in ten year patterns.  But, you have to give the believers credit for dogged determination, because, if they don't get this one we have a bumper crop of Armageddons this decade.  Next year the Mayan calender brings its five hundred year charting to an end, and, of course, the end of the world once again.
     Have you ever seen the Mayan calender?  It's a circular stone disc with so many symbols you couldn't get another chisel mark on it.  We don't even make five hundred year calenders.  I mean, who cares what's happening five hundred years in the future.  We won't be here.  The calender had to end somewhere.
     The amazing thing about the believers faith in the Mayan doomsday prediction is that it's based on the beliefs of a culture that killed people to appease their God.  I'm pretty sure that places them in the heathen category, even though they were probably God-fearing people.  I know I would fear a God to whom some dude would slice my heart out and let me watch as he held it to the sky and my blood flowed out of me down stone gulley's to feed a ravenous God.  We don't do that.  We're civilized. 
     We also have God-fearing people.  I don't trust a God that I have to fear.  He sounds too human - not all knowing and wise - not one who would look on his creation as just that - his creation, his expression.  It is what it is.  An all knowing God would accept that.
     I keep thinking about those streets made of gold.  That sounds so materialistic.  It symbolizes wealth.  Wealth is a concept of man on an earthly level, and I prefer the disorganized organization of a forest to a military clean village, if I have to choose an earthly setting to spend my death in, that is.  If I have a choice, though, and I'm pretty sure that I do, I think I would like to be where ever living soul is, since that is what I am, and part of.  You may not call that a God.  I know that I don't.  It makes no demands and accepts me as I am.  If offers no mysteries and makes no threats.  It doesn't get pissed off at you.  I have different names for it - depending what I'm writing; Great Spirit or the Ancient Ones, when I'm writing with an Indian flavor, Soul, Living energy, Black energy, from a scientific perspective, as that energy flows throughout the universe and they don't have a clue what it is.  They can't see it but they know that it's there, sort of like living energy, which is the most profound element on our planet, yet, unlike everything else, no elements of the planet can create it.  It doesn't exist, but you're proof that it does.
     Boy, did I wander off track.  That's what happens when you write stream-of-conscious. 
     So, if any of you believers are wrapping it up for the big day, and you own a BMW Z-4, or a Honda S2000, I'd be glad to take it off your hands for you.  You won't need it where you're going, and if I'm destined to hell, I want to get there in a nice sports car.














All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.

Tonight

The trouble with writing blogs is that I usually don't get around to it until late at night, when I feel about as creative as a tree stump and have the imagination of a stone.  When being an artist and a writer was my only source of income I was focused on it - well, that and selling my work.  Now, I work what I call a straight job.  After seeing clients all day and finishing up formatted paperwork that discourages any form of creativity, then doing a 3 miler to release the day, I sit down here at the computer and feel burned out.  So, I've got to ask myself whether the illusion of financial security is more important than being an artist and writer, which is a daily gamble.  One of the few art show jokes that I ever heard was about the artist who won the lottery and was asked what he was going to do now that he had millions.  "Well", he said, "I'll probably keep doing art shows until the money runs out."

The difference between a regular job and being an artist - self employed, is the difference between being a herd animal and being a sailing wind.  Reality is that my herd animal job is as tenuous as a steers day on the prairie.  Budget cuts are our predators.  As an artist, I can't be fired or laid off.  I can screw up and lose everything, but everything is just that - things.  Things are replaceable.  So is money.  How you live your life is not replaceable.  You don't die with money.  You die with memories, and within them lies your fulfillment or regrets.










All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.

New book

I just submitted the final of my last book of poetry to Amazon.  In hindsight, I would have done this a little differently, but it's too late now.  This particular book. Travel Your Road, is poetry and prose, and follows a story line of a young man's search for his place in life.  I have many new poems in this book, but also the most popular poems from my previous five books.  Prior to putting this one on Amazon, I had sold Travel Your Road through more conventional outlets and did quite well.  Keeping in mind that this is poetry, I sold a few thousand copies, which is not bad for the category.
As soon as I get this one on Kindle, I will be putting out Quiet Times, which is a book of love poems, which follows a story line.  This book was also a very good seller through conventional outlets.
I'm working on a new book at the moment, which is a series of inter-connecting short stories with a sprinkling of relevant poems in between the stories.  I'm really enjoying the one I'm working on right now.  History has taught me that the more you enjoy what you're writing, the better the book is.  I can only hope that observation holds true.










All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.