Tag Archives: Women

What Exactly is a Nice Guy?

Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , ,
In my many space travels as a legospaceman, I never ran into a civilization that didn’t speak lego

One of the more common tropes of banter on social media is the concept of nice guys and how someone feels she was treated badly by one, and thus, they’re all just really bad guys. It’s almost its own demographic within the confines of writing that whenever I see a story that mentions “nice guys”, I suspect it’s going to turn negative and start talking about how nice guys are anything but that.

Well, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Most nice guys aren’t nice guys. They’re opportunists that hide behind the designation and then will eventually pounce when the time finally comes around. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t guys out there who aren’t nice guys; it just means that there are very few, and most women will come across one or two in her lifetime, and probably never even realize he was standing in front of her at the time because she’s focused more on the guy pretending to be one and making lots of noise to convince her of that possibility.

I remember a story of a friend of mine who stopped by our usual coffee joint one day and started out the conversation with “I don’t understand women. I’m a nice guy, and I get treated like crap.”

Now, you’re probably thinking all sorts of things about my “friend”, who let’s just call Bob for the sake of names, and let’s just get the baggage out of the way with what we suspect about Bob. If Bob called himself a nice guy, your impression of him probably has a lot to do with how you’ve been treated by the guys in your past, so that if you’ve been treated badly, you’re probably going to think Bob is just pretending to be a nice guy, and if you’ve had a decent relationship with guys in your past, you might suspect that he could be a nice guy, but he probably has a flaw or two that might need to be fixed.

But Bob was really none of those. You see, Bob was full of crap.

When Bob told me this nice guy stuff, I remembered that he had been in a dicey relationship with Shirley because she had found out about Becky, and he was trying to make time with Veronica (yeah, all made up names cause this isn’t a gossip column). But seriously, he wasn’t loyal, cared only about the woman he was with at the very moment he happened to be standing in front of her, and he either dumped or got dumped by them on almost a whim.

He was most definitely not a nice guy.

But here’s the catch. He THOUGHT he was a nice guy.

Why? Because he was who he was, and in most people’s stories they are never the villain; they are always the hero. Our psyche is designed to make us feel that way. Our inner voice rarely says, “hey, dufus, you’re a bad guy.” But there are many occasions where it probably should.

As a guy who tends to be that person that people confide in, let me just tell you that practically every guy sees himself as a nice guy. Because he’s who he is, and I would argue that even a guy sitting on death row for murdering half the population of Arkansas with a chainsaw is probably looking into the mirror and saying: “Nails, you’re really a nice guy.” That’s just the natural state of people. We’re stupid when we need to be stupid just so we can get through the day into the next one.

So, what is a nice guy? Or more importantly, do any actually exist?

I’d like to think they do, and I’d like to say that I’m probably one of them, but I may suffer from disillusion just like Bob did. I’m bred like every other male on the planet in that I’m always going to believe my inner voice is helping me to do the best job I can, so therefore, I must be a nice guy. Wouldn’t surprise me, however, if there’s some woman out there thinking to herself, “sorry, kiddo, but you couldn’t even put the toilet seat down no matter how many times I told you,” so even that’s probably just in perspective. Some people are going to like you, and others, no matter what you do or say, aren’t going to like you.

That’s just life.

So, let’s take it a step further. If you desired to be a nice guy, what would differentiate you from those who aren’t, because in the end, just gaining the designation of “nice” indicates that there must be those who aren’t nice, or are at least not as nice. So, how do we achieve just that?

I’d argue that to begin with, your goals need to be further than a cost-benefit analysis of outcomes. If you do everything in the guise of transactional behavior (if I do this, I get that), you’re never going to achieve a sense of niceness. Instead, you’re going to gain whatever item or items you were striving for that you hoped your good nature would yield for you. There’s no niceness in that whatsoever.

When I think about feeling “nice,” I often find myself having to think outside of myself. And it’s a two-step process. First, you have to want to do something for others to benefit them. And then, which is the hardest part, you have to do it in a way that doesn’t actually work to benefit you.

Years back, I used to mentor young people in writing. People used to ask me what I got out of it. My response was that one day I would get to see really good writing out there in the world that I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t offered my assistance back then. I saw that as “nice” behavior, even though in the end, I was still probably getting something out of the mix. But then I ran across predatory writing mentors that were interested in achieving a piece of someone’s future success, or some that actually used it as a vehicle to further their dating prospects, neither of which seemed very “nice” to me. But then, I suspect “nice” wasn’t exactly a part of their process.

So, after years of interacting with people on various levels, I’ve come to the conclusion that being a nice guy means going out of your way to help others without any desire for compensation or benefit in return. Having said that, there’s an element that sometimes goes over the top with this definition, where people think to be “nice” you have to actually sacrifice and lose something to achieve such a status. Again, that’s back to the transactional approach to giving and receiving.

For me, I’m satisfied just going out of my way to see someone else benefit from something I’ve done or said. And sometimes, just a smile of acknowledgement is enough to make me feel that I’ve done something that is perceived as being “nice”. Those who seek awards or accolades aren’t necessarily nice people, but people seeking some type of validation as payment.

Back when I was in grad school, I remember the grad lounge had a printer that always broke down. Before going back to grad school, I was a computer repair technician, and I specialized in harder to maintain aspects of that field like monitors, hard drives and, yes, printers. So, often, when I heard another grad student complaining about how he or she couldn’t get his or her papers completed in time because of the printer, I would sneak into the lab at night and actually fix the printer so it would be working the next morning. No one ever figured out who was constantly fixing the printer (it was old and it happened a lot due to the amount of usage), but eventually people started giving credit to one of the “smarter” grad students who was always bragging about his accomplishments; he even took credit for it. I could have jumped in and revealed his lack of accomplishments, but honestly, I didn’t care, and I found it kind of funny while a bit interesting as it told me more and more about this individual than I would have ever discovered any other way. For the longest time, he was perceived as “nice” for going out of his way to fix the computer constantly, and he did nothing to challenge that assumption.

That sort of showed me that this is how so many people can constantly perceive the wrong people as “nice guys”, and then feel so angry when they discover they’re not, in fact, really nice guys.

The reality of the situation is that most nice guys will go under the radar because that’s part of the process of actually being a nice guy. When you seek validation for it, you’re not really nice any longer.

It’s kind of like the old Socratic argument that plagued the philosopher in his final days. People claimed he was the smartest man alive, yet he suspected that once he acknowledged himself as the smartest man, he would no longer be worthy of that title.

Nice guys are somewhat the same way, which is why the noisiest “nice guy” who wants everyone to know how nice he is, is often not actually a nice guy. If you want to find the “nice guy” look in the shadows near the guy taking the most credit, and chances are you may actually find him. Just don’t let him know you found him, because most often he remains the nice guy as long as he never has to claim the title.

Unfortunately, some people just don’t seem to understand sarcasm

Politics, , , , , ,

I was going to be writing another post today, but I received a screed today from someone who was inflamed by one of my previous postings. She apparently read the title of the piece, went into a critical reading mode and then started scribing her attack before she finished absorbing what she read. You see, the post she was responding to was from September 7, 2011, in which I took Iran to task over whipping a woman in public as their response to her “infidelities” or something equally stupid when it comes to countries doing really stupid things. The tone I took was straight out sarcasm, in which I acted like Iran was completely just in its ridiculous actions (by pointing out with equally stupid comparisons, using the same ridiculous logic they were using to condemn her in the first place).

As I realize, not everyone is capable of seeing this for sarcasm and the person attacked me for being a misogynistic hater of women. In other words, I devoted an entire column to how ridiculous Iran was in taking such actions against women, only to have someone ridicule me for being hateful towards women.

I give up. It doesn’t matter that the article was reproduced by dozens of other sites and hailed by several different bloggers as evoking conversation where it was needed. Some people just don’t get it, and no matter how hard I try, I still end up with someone attacking me for doing the complete opposite of what she purports.

It is stuff like this that makes me think the struggle is no longer worth it. Fuck people and the hostilty that the world has for women. Apparently getting involved only creates misery for those who try to bring such issues to light. It’s not worth it any more.

Next time Iran, Iraq, Turkey or any other woman-hating country decides to stone a woman for speaking her mind, I’m going to ignore it and watch the Simpsons instead. At least Homer doesn’t send me a two page screed, pointing out how much I hate women in reponse to a post where I am saying the complete opposite.

21st Century Technology for a World Stuck in the Middle Ages

News, Relationships, Social Networking, , , , , ,

Sometimes when I read the news, I’m just too amazed to believe that what I’m reading isn’t in fact something from the Onion, rather than from the actual news. The other day, I caught the story where an Egyptian general, who is still a general today, indicated that female protesters who were arrested were administered virginity tests because, and this part still floors me, they wanted to make sure that when the women claimed they were raped, they could be proved liars because:

“We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place,” he told the American network. “None of them were [virgins].”

What really gets me is the gall the guy had to actually make some kind of in your face comment that somehow any claims of rape would be false because they weren’t actually virgins, the translation meaning that in Egypt, a woman can’t be raped if she’s not actually a virgin. Think about that for a second. Now think about it for a minute. Did any more time somehow make that come off as making any more sense than the ridiculousness of when you first read it? I would hope not. Or you’re a part of the problem, and you really should be reading comic books instead of this blog. No, I take that back. Comic books shouldn’t get that kind of an insult.

Every day, I read more and more ridiculous stories like the one I just mentioned, and every day they just keep on coming. It’s like we don’t learn anything, and the stories just get worse. To add even more insult to this injury, I can’t even feel comforted by saying, well, that just happens in some obscure part of the world. Way too often the stories are coming right from the United States, where you read of some politician who makes some kind of statement that you feel even a general in Egypt wouldn’t be stupid enough to make. Like the subject of abortion. Recently, it’s been used as justification for all sorts of ridiculousness, so that whenever it’s brought up in subject, people throw all sorts of common sense out through the window. Male politicians in this country, who would never advocate that raping a woman is an okay thing, will then turn around and say, “well, it’s probably God’s way” if someone raped a woman and some anti-abortion person doesn’t want to use this to justify why she shouldn’t carry a baby to term, specifically one that came from someone who raped her. It’s like people have a tendency to turn off the “common sense” knob whenever we start talking about political issues.

But when it comes to relations between men and women, this country, this planet, is like some kind of purgatory for the Middle Ages because we’ve stopped learning anything and suddenly no longer think in common sense terms. I’m reminded of the Civil Rights movement, which most people who have some sense of common sense will argue on the right side, but when it comes to offering those same civil rights to gender, suddenly we’re back in Dred Scott days. So few people even realize that at one point, African-Americans were finally able to gain the right to vote, specifically through an alliance they made with women, who put off their own struggle for equality by dealing with the race issue first. But when it came to the Equal Rights Amendment, suddenly African-American men immediately remembered they were men first before being black men, and they turned completely against the same people who offered them assistance in their most needed hour. There’s something about gender that people just don’t seem to get.

In the 1970s, there was a huge battle in gender roles, mainly because men didn’t seem to see any actual issue when it came to rape. Believe it or not, in the 1970s, a woman had to prove that she wasn’t a slut before she was able to prove that someone may have taken liberties that he shouldn’t have taken. But you’d think that we’d gotten over that. Instead, every now and then, you’ll see some court case appear where some company is being sued by a group of women because it is STILL acting like its mentality is stuck in a loop in the 1970s, not the 21st century. And people will STILL side against women, as if the issue is brand new. And then you’ll get sniping from other guys who start to yell “reverse discrimination” and all sorts of other things, mainly because there’s still this belief that women need to be in the kitchen making dinner, or in the bedroom making babies. It’s amazing how quickly we fall into these roles yet again.

Anyway, I found myself reading the newspaper today again, and I began to wonder if I was stuck in a time loop again. But I guess I’m not. I have a feeling this is going to be the way things are for a very long time to come. So women, I guess you’re going to just have to learn to live with it, because apparently, I’m the only one who seems to care.

This Just In! Duane’s 2011 Spending Plan Extension Has Been Approved!

Business, Economics, Memoirs, Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

brucoe 

(Brucoe, the one independent member of Duane’s government. He is still undecided on the budget.) 

Today, after a marathon session involving his partisan stuffed animals, Duane Gundrum has declared that he has come to an agreement to continue his spending plans for the next few weeks. Up until this time, his conservative stuffed animals, led by Scruffy the Bear, were holding out for more cuts in collections from his job at the Piggly Wiggly Convenient Store. However, after promising that Duane would cut back on discretionary spending, specifically Root Beer flavored Laffy Taffy candy bars, the conservative bloc decided it would fund Duane for a short period before he would have to reexamine his finances again.

Liberal leader Elmer the bean bag frog pointed out that Duane has been making numerous sacrifices this year by avoiding payments of his electricity bill, his cell phone bill and normal expenditures of necessary pornography at the Double Juggs Adult Bookstore. In Elmer’s words: “Duane has been suffering greatly during this period of downturn, and thus, we couldn’t see any other areas in which he could cut,” even though conservatives claimed that there were areas of spending that could be curtailed, such as iPhone apps, “special” massages at the controversial Madame Wong’s Swedish Massage Parlour, and random purchases of Twinkies and Ho-Hos.

elmo darth 

(Liberal representative Elmo during a particulary tense negotiation session with the conservative whip.) 

Members of both parties recognize that without a dedicated budget agreed upon by all members, Duane will continue to barely function economically and further discretionary spending may suffer as a result. There has even been a fear of insolvency with gas purchasing and difficult to cancel Netflix memberships.

This is the third time since both parties could not come up with a budget that Duane has been forced to push a spending plan into the new fiscal year. It is hoped that a consensus can be reached by the Stuffed Animal Lobby that is influencing finances in Duane’s government. We will keep you informed of further developments.

In other news, girls still don’t want to date Duane. We go to Angela in Grand Rapids for more on this continuing story…..

women 

(A random selection of women willing to go on the record as “not interested in dating Duane”.)

Women Are Causing Problems Again!

Bizarre, Religion, , ,

(FYI: This article is satire, so if you read it, please understand that it’s not meant to be taken seriously. For some reason WAY too many people have responded to this article as if it’s actually a criticism against women. Most people get the point of this post as a post-modernist criticism against Iranian patriarchal policies, but unfortunately not everyone else does)

This just in! Women cause earthquakes. I mean, we all suspected this. Women are known for doing some pretty evil things, but it wasn’t until we checked with Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, who stated eruditely, “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.” I mean, what more evidence do we need than that.

Come to think of it, this type of cause and effect analysis reminds me of the gnome underwear thieves in South Park, who argue profit strategy, summed up as:

1. Steal the world’s underwear

2. ???

3. Profit!

Now, it wouldn’t be a funny story if just some obscure cleric made such a ridiculous comment, but soon after, it was backed by none other than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who then argued that as a result of this horrible situation brought on by promiscuous and sexy-dressing women that an imminent earthquake is going to hit Tehran, advocating that its 12 million residents must relocate IMMEDIATELY.

Now, I don’t want to point fingers, but I’ve always suspected that women wearing sexy clothing cause horrible calamities in the world. I mean, think about it. In 1909, there was an earthquake in San Francisco. Sexy women were dancing in brothels in San Francisco at the time. Need more evidence? Before the huge earthquake in Haiti, I heard that some guys were in downtown Los Angeles having a lap dance from a stripper named Roxy. Although I was not there to report it, due to a stupid jury duty appointment I had to keep, I can bet Roxy was wearing some pretty revealing clothing. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of nothing BUT what she might have been wearing since I was unable to make that appointment.

We really need to do something to stop women from causing these horrible disasters. Obviously, we can’t ask them to patrol themselves because they’d just go back to their lascivious ways because they’re women, and we know you can’t trust them and their lustful manners. Therefore, I’m proposing a task force, led by me because I care so much, to go into places where we know evil, morally-bankrupt women to congregate and educate them on how they are derailing our attempts to circumvent earthquakes and wonton destruction. I could start on the west coast and work my way east.

I mean, someone has to think about the children.

By the way, the article can be found here. I’d blame Fox News, but it originates from the Associated Press.