I hate stuff

So I'm playing chess with Mike Dorothy. In case you don't know, he'll own you in chess. Anywho, we're playing a good game, but then the internet dies. For some random reason, our router has decided that when there's an incoming call, if my dad doesn't pick up after the first ring or so, it'll die. So the internet comes back, and we return to the game. I move a piece (Mike did a good job of making me move a certain piece), and then he checkmates me. Why am I sharing this? Because the last few times I've lost chess, it's because of a random interuption that causes me to lose ON THE VERY NEXT MOVE. I don't lose my queen, I don't get set up to lose, I lose on the next move. My dad's needed to talk to me about something, at the most pivotal move in the game. It was so pivotal because I lost after I moved. I don't even remember what happened the other times, but something took my attention away at the most crucial moment. What are the chances that the last 3 or 4 times I've lost in chess, it's because something distracts me on the very move that causes me to lose? Obviously they're 100%, because it's happened. It's just incredibly frustrating, and stupid.

In other news, the US Open is playing, 2 weeks of tennis awesomeness. I love tennis. Playing is incredibly fun, and watching someone like Roddick or Sharapova is also quite fulfilling. Beef jerky is also quite fulfilling.

I turn 20 in 2 days, and it's kind of scary. I'll no longer be considered a teen, my age will start with the number 2, I'm 1 year away from being able to drink alcohol....wait, that's not scary. What's scary is that I haven't played tennis in a while, and I feel like a drug addict without a fix.

What do I want?

When I started writing these posts, I was hoping to show women what men think about certain things, so that they could understand us better. I tried to be fair by pointing out the falacies or potential falacies in the way men and women think and act. I tried to propose different scenarios to things, because not every person or situation is the same. I wanted to be fair to the different possibilities when I could be, without listing out every scenario possible, which would just be insane. I hope that my efforts have been beneficial to some. I know that it has sparked some good talks with me and other people so far, which is good.

So what do I want from all this? First of all, I want myself to be like this virtuous guy I've refered to many times before. I then want to "evolve" into a virtuous man. It will take time and effort, but I want to require that of myself. I also want my friends to be like these virtuous guys and men. I do know some great guys who are on the right path to getting a great woman, and I hope that they elevate themselves up to that level of virtuousity and stay keep improving. I hope that any other guys who have read this will try harder, change their lives, and want to become virtuous.

I want all of us men to search for virtuous women, and only settle for the best.

I want all the women who have read my posts to have learned something. I want them to feel assured that there are good men out there, and what a worldly man wants isn't what a virtuous man needs.

I would like people to talk about what they have read on here, whether they agree or disagree. A man and woman may see a subject differently, but that doesn't mean that either side is wrong. What matters is if we can understand why the other person thinks the way they do, and maybe work out a compromise, even if they both have to change themselves a little to do so. If they can't agree, that's fine, but at least they tried and they understand each other better.

I think it would be great if at least one woman could do what I've been doing, and explain certain things from a woman's perspective. Comparing what virtuous and non-virtuous women think and want and need. Pointing out what a lot of women have a problem with, or what they think men don't quite understand. If all this is done from a positive and constructive point of view, I think it would be wonderful.

Men want to know how women think, and what they think about things. We don't need to know how to control your minds, even though that would be really cool. We just want to understand you better. If we all understand each other better, we can avoid problems in the future much easier.

I will probably write more posts as I think of topics or am asked questions. I've said to some of my friends before that by explaining everything that I can about men, I'm either going to help us raise our standards, or doom all men. Ben also said that I should have written a book rather than posting it all online. Oh well, I just hope that this is beneficial to people.

Let's all try to work with each other and try to understand each other. It may require changing something major or minor about yourself, but if other people benefit, isn't that more important?

Thank you everyone who has been reading this.

Play together, stay together

As I've stated before, men are competitive. It helps us be manly, and we like competing. I know women also like competing, even though it doesn't make them feel manly. Competing is fun, and a lot of guys like women that are at least somewhat competitive. We want to be able to share that competitiveness with you.

You see, when we normally compete with other guys, it's usually for fun, to see who's better, to show off, or some combination of the three. When we're playing and girls are watching and/or participating, we definitely want to show off, but look like we're just having fun, so that it doesn't seem like we're trying too hard. Ok, that's probably nothing new to you.

Now, let's say that there's a guy and a girl who are dating. Most likely, that guy will want to do something competitive with his girlfriend. Competing with her is a way for him to be manly, and to spend time with her. Plus it's a way for her to show interest in something he likes. Also, a woman being competitive/agressive can be attractive, but more importantly, it's a manly way for a guy to spend time with his girl.

This next part is kind of off topic, by does tie in. Have you ever noticed who usually leaves first in a conversation? Is it the guy or the girl? I've noticed that it's usually the girl. Guys in general want to spend as much time as they can with a girl. Of course guys will leave before the girl does if he has something to do, wants to see his other friends, isn't interested in that girl, and for other reasons as well. Of course, just because the guy doesn't leave first doesn't mean that he likes her. He might just be really friendly and not want to leave, or he hasn't seen her for a while and wants to hang out with her again, or some other reason. However, the most common of all these reasons is that the guy wants to spend as much time with her as he can. Maybe he likes her, or kind of likes her, or just likes who she is, so he probably won't be the one to have to say bye first. Note: some guys are experienced at "playing the game", so they'll walk away first, or something like that. Be aware of guys like that.

Under normal circumstances, the guy will want to spend time with you, and being competitive is a great and (in our minds) manly way to do it. I've said before that sports are a good way for male bonding. It can also be a good way for men and women to bond. That competitive/agressive behavior may seem attractive. We like being with you, doing something fun with you.

If you can totally kick our butt in a sport, that will probably be intimidating. If you can give us a run for our money, cool. We're fine with you winning sometimes. Beyond that, it's compromising our manliness. There's nothing wrong with you being really good at a sport, or two, or three, or however many. It's just that we really don't want to lose to a girl. If I'm playing tennis against Maria Sharapova, there's no shame in me losing badly to her. If I'm playing a sport I'm not good at, and she's on the school team, that's understandable. Beyond that, losing to a girl isn't good for us. Sorry, that's just how it is.

Final Banquet

By now I written so many posts on men that if you haven't started from the beginning, you'll have to go back to the archives. Just thought I'd point that out.

Final Banquet!? What does this have to do with anything? Well, considering that camp just ended, and another Final Banquet has come and gone, I figured that I'd offer some thoughts and perspectives on this anual occasion.

The average guy doesn't spend a lot of time getting himself ready each day. He doesn't have to blowdry his hair, put on makeup, pick an outfit that compliments his hair style, or anything like that. If he knows that he'll be doing a lot of physical activity that day, he'll probably choose to wear some athletic pants. That's usually the extent of how he prepares himself for the day. When it's the Sabbath, or there's Topics and Dance that night, he'll probably spend a little more time on preparing himself. He might put on a dash of cologne or spray himself with some body spray if he feels like it/brought any with him. He may double check that his hair (if he has any) looks good since he won't have sports as an excuse for it not looking normal. He'll also be sure to remember the deodorant too, since he won't have sports as an excuse for him smelling slightly stinky.

When Final Banquet comes, a guy will probably end up smelling like Axe body spray whether he wants to or not. He'll be sure that his hair looks good and he's in his nicest outfit. The guy just wants to look nice and natural. He knows you're gonna spend a while getting yourself ready, so he'll spend a good amount of time (for a guy) getting himself ready too.

So what does the guy think about women getting themselves ready for Final Banquet? Frankly, some women are a little overkill in our opinion. By the time we're ready, you're still working on your hair. Your outfit for Final Banquet, which is most likely pretty extravagant and/or expensive, you probably won't wear many more times. You might not even wear it again! Yeah, we know that you like shopping, but $200-300 or more for a one night occasion where you don't need to be that dressed up is a little too much. Spend that amount for prom. Wear a nice outfit, or buy something you'll wear more than twice. We don't care if you wear the same outfit at the Feast, or at camp next year. Seriously, we would prefer that would wear it again. It'll bring back good memories. When you get back home, wear it on the Sabbath if you wanna get dressed up.

Another thing is the makeup. We don't like a lot of makeup. A little bit is good. If you don't wear any, we're cool with that. Some girls do look better with a little makeup on, and that's fine. When you start looking like a mannequin, that's when we don't like it. Seriously, less is more. We like the natural look. Very rarely does someone with a load of makeup really look attractive to us, and even then, we would prefer that they look natural. I'm going to give a bad example, because there's no real way of explaining it better that I can think of now.

Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition. I warned you, bad example. Here's what a stereotypical girl looks like in that magazine: she's in a swimsuit, by some beach somewhere, laying in different poses. Is her hair all perfect? Nope! It's messy, but it's natural looking. Is she wearing makeup? Maybe not, since she's rolling around on the beach. She'll look more natural without that makeup. Simply put: there's something about that natural look that is attractive. I'm not talking about when you wake up in the morning after a bad night. That's not a really attractive natural look. We'll still find you attractive, but the look won't be. We want that natural and real look. It gets to us. Once again, not every guy thinks this way.

So back to your hair, so that I don't sound like a hypocrite. We don't want your hair to be all natural like when you're at Final Banquet. We want it to look nice. It doesn't have to be all crazy. If it's a normal day, we still want it to look nice. A nice and kind of natural look, if you can pull it off, also looks nice, but the way you usually do it works. When it comes to makeup, we like natural over fake.

We like it when you dress up and look nice. However, you can try too hard to look nice and take away from what you have. Final Banquet is a special occasion, and yes, as men, we don't have to prepare ourselves like women do. We have less to prepare, so we make things simpler. We have no problem with you preparing yourselves more than us, but we don't want you to overdo it. Your outfits don't have to be super expensive, your hair doesn't have to be crazy, and less makeup is better.

What you see isn't always what you get

Man, silent communication is the worst. I'm talking about the "this is who I am, and you can tell who I am because of how I look, act, etc." sort of communication. Like if I dress up like a skater would, I'm non-verbally telling you that I like skating and/or the skater lifestyle. There are other ways for guys to non-verbally communicate things, and this is where some problems can begin.

Let's say we've got a guy who works out and is in good shape. He's got some defined arms and abs, and his face looks good too. He doesn't have to be crazy muscular, but the right amount of muscle so that he's attractive to you. Ok, before you even meet this guy, there are some things you can know about him. He's dedicated; he has to be in order to be in the shape he's in. He's in fairly good health. The way he looks can symbolize being protective, and if you like that quality in a man, then in that respect, he's appealing to you.

Now let's stand me up next to this guy. I'm not as muscular as him, or a lot of guys as a matter of fact. I don't have defined abs, but I do have decently strong ones. What can you tell from the way I look? I'm not as dedicated as the other guy, and I'm probably not as healthy as he is either. My looks don't symbolize someone who can protect you.

Now it's time to turn your world upside down. First of all, why is the guy in the shape he's in? Is it because he's not that smart, so instead of studying, he works out? Is he just trying to impress women? To me, dedication with the wrong goal pretty much negates that quality. Unless you know the guy, you have no way of knowing why he's in the shape he's in. You don't know if that's the only area of his life that's he dedicated in. If the guy is dedicated in other areas of his life, awesome. If he's dedicated because he just wants to attract women, or he works out to make up for the fact that he's stupid, or some other reason, then you should probably not consider this guy.

Now let's look at me. Laziness + eating whatever I want and as much of it as I want = me looking like I'm not fed. Unless I could afford to buy massive weight gain formula, eat a bunch of food that's supposed to help me gain weight, and had room in my house to put a bench so I could work out, I can't gain weight. Unfortunately, I don't have the money or the room to do those things. I'm not going to look like that guy standing next to me. Because I am physically unable to look like him, you might think that I am not dedicated. You don't know how dedicated I am in other areas of my life. You might not see me as being protective. You can't tell if I'm in better cardiovascular shape than him or not. You might assume that I'm not because I don't work out all the time.

Until you get to know that guy next to me, you have no reason to assume that the reason for him working out is to attract women or any other reason like that. That's fine, but what you see in that guy, or what you think you see in that guy are only educated guesses. What you see in me, or think you see in me, are only educated guesses, and in my situation, are based on a lack of information.

Let's say I see a girl in a tight shirt and shorts. What am I supposed to think of her? What if the first time I see you, you happen to be wearing some physically appealing outfit? You wouldn't want me to judge you on that. If the way you look isn't the way society says women should look, should I think that you aren't healthy, aren't attractive, or whatever? Or should I get to know you first and enjoy "the symbolism of your body" later, after I know the kind of person you are?

Guys like to use actions as a way to tell what kind of person you are. I'm seeing that some women (not sure how many, at least some) use results to tell what kind of person you are. Of course there are times when men and women use both, but this is a general statement. What's my point? If there's some quality you think you see in a guy, prove that it's there first. Guys are going around unintentionally displaying qualities that they may or may not have. We don't always know what sort of ideas we're sending out based on the way we look! You might think we lack a certain quality because you can't see it's effects by the way we look. You might also see more qualities in us than there are. If you get the wrong impression of us, sorry, we don't mean it. If we don't know that you're looking for the results of qualities based on how we look, then we'll keep sending you the wrong message without knowing it!

Does my body lack protective symbolism? Yeah. Doesn't mean I'm not protective, or that I'm not dedicated. I have special circumstances, and I can't do anything about them. Don't penalize me because I don't look a certain way. There are so many different factors in involved in different situations that half the time, the way a person looks might not mean anything, or it could mean a bunch of things. Give me (and other guys of course) a chance to prove who we are, based on who we are, not on the "results" of qualities you think we may or may not have.

I don't think this is too big of a problem. Then again, I could be way off. At the very least, it's a potential problem which can easily be solved, and make life in the universe much easier.

Can't we all just get along?

I feel like ranting about this topic right now (actually it's kind of 2 topics in 1), and it will lead into the next section of posts, so here I go. If a woman likes a guy, and she wants him to know, sometimes she'll give signs or signals. And women think that men are stupid because we don't pick up on them. Let me explain why men don't pick up on them usually.

First of all, there is no standard as to what is or isn't a sign. Let's take 2 girls for example. One is a really friendly girl, who may or may not be flirty by nature. Then there's another girl who isn't really friendly or flirty, but she's still nice. The normal things a friendly girl does might be the things the other girl would use to show the guy that she likes him.

You're probably thinking "Well if the non-flirty girl is acting flirty, she likes him, duh!" Well, what if she might seem that way because she's more comfortable around the guy? She's open and comfortable with him, but that doesn't mean she likes him. The guy might be reading into what she does. And what about the flirty/friendly girl? What does she do to show the guy that she likes him? Does she have to be crazy flirty with him? Does she do other things, which might be normal for other people, to show that she likes a guy?

This is the part where you say that it's the guy who's supposed to ask the girl out and all that, so we shouldn't be pointing the finger at you because we don't understand your signs. Before asking a girl out, we would like to know if you like us, which is why you give a sign in the first place. It's a vicious circle, and there are 2 things I'd like to explain now.

First of all, why we don't like asking a girl out if we don't know if she likes us or not. Getting shot down is not fun. It feels really awkward to be like "I like you....oh you don't like me. Ok...ummmm...awkward silence....ummmm...yeah...I'm gonna leave now because I feel kind of embarassed, bye." Asking a girl out is the man's "responsibility". When we do ask a girl out, we are putting our manliness at risk. By saying no, you are saying no to who we are as a person. Our manliness helps define who we are, and you are saying no to our manliness. Yes, there are other factors involved, but beneath all of them, the fact still remains that we risk our manliness and our whole being when we ask you out. We don't want to take a risk like that unless we think that we will succeed. Whether we deluded ourselves into thinking we have a chance or not isn't the point. We want to see signs that you do like us, that you are interested. We want you to give us the green light, or maybe an off-green light, so that we feel confident in taking the risk.

The second reason is something I'm gonna spend some time talking about in future posts; communication. Most relationship problems I hear about with people are caused in part by communication problems. How people communicated, and the other person's expectations of communication. I will give 2 examples of men and women communicating (once again, this is a blanket statement).

I spent a few days up at Sharon's condo, it was a couple of hours before sunset, and it was the last night I was staying there. We had nothing to do, so I thought it would be nice if Sharon, her sister, and I all went for a walk on the beach, which we had not done yet. When a guy wants to go for a walk on the beach, he'll say "Let's go for a walk on the beach" or "Do you want to go for a walk on the beach?" Quick and simple. There's no alternate meaning to what he said. He wants to go for a walk on the beach.

A woman will say something like "The beach looks nice." Here's where the communication problems begin. The guy is expecting the woman to say what she means, since that's how the guy thinks. If she wants to go for a walk, he expects her to say that she wants to go for a walk. Instead, she makes an ambiguous statement. If she says "The beach looks nice", she might just be saying that it looks nice out there, or she might mean that she wants to go for a walk out there, or go swim in the ocean. So now the guy has to ask her what, if anything, she'd like to do out there. Here comes the fun part; if we haven't figured out what she'd like to do now (based on her completely ambiguous statement), she might not want to go outside now. Or she'll really want to go outside, and say that she doesn't. She might be nice and just tell us what she'd like to do. Yes, it's frustrating.

Example 2: I spent 2 weeks at my mom's house, and one morning, she asked if I'd like to go for a ride with her. She has a 2000 and something Toyota Solara. It's a nice car, and I've driven it before. She said "go for a ride" which means riding in the passenger seat, not driving (at least in my crazy world, that's what it means). I decline. She gets back later, and says that she's surprised that I didn't go with her. She would have let me drive! She says that just because she asked if I wanted to go for a ride didn't mean that she wouldn't let me drive on the way back. Because I interpreted what she said to mean what it meant (go for a ride means go for a ride, not drive), I missed out. A guy in her situation would have said "Do you want to drive?" If he says "Do you want to go for a ride?", and I say no, he'll follow up by saying "I'll let you drive on the way back."

A guy expects someone to say what they mean. We don't want to look for hidden meanings behind things, or alternate possibilities to what you said. We have an expection for men and women to say something and mean it, period. So when you say something and alude to something else, we're not gonna catch on because we're expecting you to say what you mean.

So now I head back to the beginning of this long post; women giving signs. Guys aren't looking out for hidden or alternate meanings to things. We're looking for simple stuff. There's no standard as to what is or isn't a sign, and men read into things pretty often (sometimes because we're hopeful, sometimes we misinterpret something you say or do), so it's hard to know for sure what is or isn't a sign.

I think men should try harder to look for what a woman means when she says something ambiguous, or slightly ambiguous. Help us out if you can, we'd really appreciate it. Also, I think women should make more of an effort to say what they mean. It'll cut down on the confusion. I think this is a fair compromise. No one will do it, but I still think people should do it.

Communication is still the topic next time, so I'll catch you all then.