Captain Aggravated

Yeah we don’t do that anymore. We don’t “supposed to.”

Faulty and even dangerous use of the phrase “supposed to.” It implies a pressure to conform to some standard of etiquette or game rule. “You’re supposed to keep your elbows off the table.” “You’re supposed to wait for the umpire to say ‘play ball’ before you pitch.”

If I were teaching a shop class, and I were to hear one of my students say “you’re supposed to use a push stick when doing thin rips on a table saw,” I would say corrective action is necessary. While yes, using a push stick while performing thin rips is good practice, use of the phrase “supposed to” implies an attitude that it is the shop teacher’s pet peeve, and that the student will be free of that pointless ritual once out on the job.

You use a push stick because a table saw is a device designed to tear the bodies of living things apart, and rapidly. If you touch the blade, your body will be torn apart, and rapidly. While performing a thin rip with your bare hands, your hands will pass very close to the blade, anything goes wrong, a kickback or similar calamity will hurt you in ways a doctor can’t fix. Push sticks are PPE, we use them so we don’t get injured, not because “it’s the rules.”

Removed by mod

There really are good people out there

There are enough lies on the internet, no need to add more.

What are you?

I was a pilot one or two careers ago, so I’m going to put it this way:

Feelings are liabilities, not assets. You launch an Airbus out of Newark and a few hundred feet up you hit more geese than your engines can take leaving you out of thrust, low on altitude and low on options, the emotional decision is to curl up on the floor and snot cry because you’re now in more danger than nature designed you to handle.

On occasion you’ll find cases where pilots do lock up like that. The kindest thing anyone will ever say about those pilots is “The primary cause of the accident was pilot error.”

Now listen to how they talk about Captain Sully. “He’s so calm. There’s no emotion in his voice, he just started working the problem.” Stopping to identify exactly which crayola crayon color exactly matched his emotional state in that moment wasn’t going to lengthen any lives; starting the APU and configuring the airplane for best glide did though. You stay in your feelings, you start doing stupid irrational things, you’re gonna die for sure. You push all of that down to your ass where it can be safely clenched out of the way and you THINK.

Having feelings is how you fuck up when your decisions matter the most. Getting rid of them is the useful skill, not giving each one a Baskin Robbins 31 flavors marketing name.

Yes. It does.

I take it you didn’t read and process the rest of my comment?

I am reminded of a book called Good To Go by Harry Constance, a US Navy SEAL who served in Vietnam. The exact line of the book it reminds me of is “No swimming.”

I’ve once heard it said that men insult their friends but don’t really mean it, women compliment their friends but they don’t mean it either. I’ll take “Come on, walk it off you’re alright” over faked sympathy every day for 37 more years.

Women have worked pretty hard to earn my apathy, so why should I deny them the prize they so vehemently seek? They’re not on my side, as an intentional consequence I am not on theirs.

No we don’t. That’s a feminist lie. The women whose political power depends on maintaining a perpetual state of victimhood by blaming every single thing on men would have you believe that.

Men will have conversations like this:

“Tiffany left me.”

…

“Really?”

…

swig of beer

…

“Yeah. Said I’m not ‘available enough.’”

…

swig of beer

…

“Shit dude.”

…

“Yeah.”

Enough information is shared for one man to put himself in the other’s shoes, think about what he went through, and arrive at the same place for himself. That need women have to put their feelings into words to yap at each other is just a symptom of their abject inability to empathize with their fellow sentient beings.

You know what doesn’t occur to men to share with other men? “Breaking news, this just in from our correspondants in the field: Nothing continues to happen.” In fact I’m going to go post that to the Dull Men’s Club community and see what comments that attracts.

No, the people who will destroy you for being anything other than fine are the women in your life. Your mother, your sisters, your daughters, whatever name your sexual partner(s) insist on being called. They’re the ones who will kick you the hardest when you’re down. You will never be more alone than when you’re surrounded by women.

I’m reminded of Joe Shea. The one who was senior chief manager of something or other at NASA during the Apollo program. You can tell Joe was a good man from how he took the Apollo 1 fire: He wanted to kill himself. He struggled to live with the idea that three of his close friends, people who trusted him and his engineers, burned to death in a machine he had some responsibility for. The man who isn’t fucked up in that position doesn’t need to be in that position.

My understanding of history is he was sent to see some psychologists, and their remarks was “Joe is very smart.” I’ve been in the aviation industry myself and I’ve danced around issues of mental health. FAR 67 has some things to say about what mental health is and isn’t a federal offense to let your doctor to tell Oklahoma City. HAHAHAHAHA. Fuck.

That’s the peak of manliness right there; that’s a man who takes his responsibilities seriously, they guy who is completely wrecked by those three little words “They trusted me.” Or more to the point, the chore of adding the letters “ed” to “they trust me.” If the effort of lifting that suffix into place wouldn’t bend your soul, kindly get the fuck out of my aerospace industry.

This was in the mid 1960’s, the stigma of seeing a shrink was even louder back then. I’m not sure how it actually played out but in the docudrama From The Earth To The Moon, Joe Shea didn’t take the suggestion from Deke Slayton that he see a psychiatrist gently. According to Wikipedia he “outsmarted” them, giving the answers he knew they’d want to hear.

From my perspective it’s a perfectly good suggestion. If you’re in the shop running a tool and it throws a blue chip in your eye, you go see the ophthalmologist to get your eye fixed. If you have a heart attack you go to the cardiologist to get your heart fixed. The thing us technician types struggle with is medicine is a squishier science than we’re used to, and psychology is the squishiest among them, especially given the FAA’s idea of “Oh he’s not perfect? Kill his career forever.” HAHAHAHAHAAAAA. Fuck. “Hey, let’s make it illegal for pilots to receive treatment or be on medication for mental disorders.” “You mean let’s make it illegal to be a pilot while mentally ill?” “What’s the difference?” “Well the way you phrased it incentivizes pilots who think they have a problem to keep it to themselves and go untreated.” “pssh I guess but when is that ever going to happen.” HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA. Fuck.

I think the point I’m trauma dumping around is Joe Shea had suffered actual mental and emotional trauma and did need the attention of mental health professionals. That’s an appropriate use of therapy. And that it may be more productive to frame it as “injury” rather than “illness” in cases like this.

The average male member of the public right now, on the other hand, hasn’t had his psyche pushed in by the deaths of his friends that he’s at least partially responsible for. The average 20 something guy gained sentience in a world that said to him “We hate you, now pay for everything or else.” And to quote Rodney Dangerfield, “Fuck me? FUCK YOU!”

What happens to a man when he shares his feelings? Has that ever gone well for any male since the evolution of meiosis?

Funny you should phrase it like that.

My uncle is a machinist specializing in automotive engine repair and modification. Over dinner last month, he mentioned that he’s used to seeing middle age customers for hot rod engine builds, midlife crisis “Always wanted to do this” kind of guys, but lately he’s been seeing men in their teens and twenties come in wanting heads ported and polished and shit like that.

They’re not spending money on women because women have made themselves impossible to want, so young men are turning their attention to things like cars.

Never don’t downvote posts with the word “patriarchy” in them. The right says “DEI hire” the left says “Patriarchy.”

Let’s put it another way:

“Why aren’t men using electrical appliances anymore?”

“Well, since the Republicans shut down Underwriter’s Labs 40 years ago they’re just too dangerous. A poll conducted by Pew Research in 2062 found only 30% of men between the ages of 20 and 40 have attempted to use a kitchen appliance and of those 30% none polled did so without being shocked, burned or lacerated. Of the men polled, none of them reported cooking indoors more than twice a year; they either exclusively seek food that requires no preparation or those who have access to the outdoors cook over wood fires. One in ten report eating canned or frozen food cold on at least a weekly basis.”

“There’s just nothing you can do to get men to seek mental health services, is there?”

How is individual talk therapy supposed to fix industry deregulation due to crony capitalism?

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I live in a town that is mostly a suburb of a military base. They’ve been cutting down as much forest as they can to cram in oversized McMansions to accomodate the influx of people moving out of the cities. Deer and raccoons have been running rampant in my neighborhood because their habitats out in the woods are being destroyed for subdivisions and shopping centers. The county recently failed to get the general assembly to budge on water restrictions on the two rivers the county government is authorized to pull water from, so they’re starting to pressure my town (which has its own waterworks that pulls from a different river than the county) to share ours. None of the people coming into the area are joining a community; none exists here. People here build tall opaque fences on their property lines and watch Netflix alone. There is no community, only a crowd.

And then a therapist is going to ask a stupid and unhelpful question like “How does that make you feel?”

My car doesn’t start most of the time and when it does it doesn’t run for very long, I’ve missed work three times last week alone because of car troubles, he’s threatening to fire me if I don’t get it right but I don’t have the money for a mechanic. “How does that make you feel?”

Feelings are the raw ore from which bad decisions are forged. How I fell is wrong and irrelevant. What am I supposed to DO?

Explain to me in actual words what a therapist is going to accomplish.

“Doctor doctor you’ve got to do something! Third spaces don’t exist, there’s no loitering signs everywhere you’ll be arrested for standing around talking, everyone my age had kids and their lives fell off, bars charge $9.50 for an ounce of bourbon and expect a tip and they play Nickelback loud enough to be heard from the moon so I’ve just been sitting at home alone drinking diet soda and playing Subnautica over and over again and while I utterly love this game it’s getting a little stale and Below Zero isn’t…good at all? So I guess I’m a little bored.”

“…Here’s a prescription for an SSRI, that’ll be $900.”

Society died but people kept having children anyway.

Meh, someone do a 50’s slang one.

All of them? including visible light?