For the most part, I consider myself a sensitive guy – or at least leaning to the sensitive side of guydom.
I realize we’re getting into some potential stereotypes here, but I don’t spit (unless, of course, a bug flies into my mouth). I drink wine, not beer. I like poetry. I have always had as many “girlfriends” (in the friend sense) as guy friends.
What’s more, I truly believe that women are not only equal, but often superior to men. While I religiously abide by my brother the psychologist’s philosophy that “women are crazy, men are stupid,” I think women are more sensitive and less impulsive than men as a general rule – and that serves them well in the arena of life.
They also tend to be more principled and to have infinitely higher standards than men. Which can be really frustrating to us guys who tend to follow the shortest line between two points and damn whoever or whatever gets in our way.
Having said that, I have an issue with a practice that seems to be gaining ground here in the Rim Country, and, I would surmise, throughout the free world. It is a practice perpetrated by women that puts men at a clear disadvantage. It is a practice, frankly, that discriminates against we members of the unfairer sex.
I refer, of course, to chick pens. These are seemingly normal ballpoint pens that have been adorned with some kind of fake flower.
When I go to my doctor’s office (who, incidentally, is a guy, but his staff is all female), I am handed a chick pen to fill out paperwork. When I go to my bank (which is overrun by females), I am handed a chick pen to sign my name to documents.
Now one could argue that a chick pen works just as well as a regular pen. I would argue right back that putting a plastic flower on the end of a pen messes up its aerodynamics.
Using the same logic I employ in arguing against sweetened iced tea, I propose that if god intended our ballpoint pens to have fake flowers affixed to them, he would have done so when he created said pens in the first place (on the sixth day, I believe).
In addition, a pen topped with fake flowers has to be a germ magnet. Think of all those extra surfaces where evil terrorist cooties can lurk.
But my primary objection to being asked to use a pen with a fake flower on it is that it offends my manhood. As sure as baseballs are guy things, flowers are girl things. I would never attach a baseball, fake or otherwise, to the end of a ballpoint pen and ask a lady to use it.
I suspect if more people who worked in doctors offices and banks were guys, we wouldn’t have this problem. Because guys, following the straightest line between two points would not take the time or trouble to screw around with the basic ballpoint pen. As Shakespeare said, “It is what it is.” Or did he say, “To be or not to be.”
But if man did decide to defeminize the ballpoint pen, how would women like to be handed a pen that had a wrench attached to it. Or a tire pressure gauge. Or maybe the rattler from a rattlesnake.
In an enlightened era when a black man can be elected president, when communism and democracy can peacefully coexist on the same planet, when Payson’s waterless urinals have rendered the great toilet seat controversy meaningless, the flowery ball point pen is an anachronism. It is a throwback to the Dark Ages, to the segregated South of the 1950s, to a time when women walked a respectful step behind their men.
I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I’m not going to take it anymore. I am going to picket and protest and sit anywhere on the bus I like. I invite you to join me.
We can form one of those tea parties. To be politically correct, let’s call it the Green Tea Party.
Ultimately, we will probably have to march on Washington D.C. and holler racial epithets at black congressmen and gay epithets at Rep. Barney Frank and call people who voted for the health care bill “baby killers.”
Of course, this is all Obama’s fault. I honestly don’t remember any flower pens before he became president. They’re not change I can believe in.
You’d think in the greatest nation on earth somebody would have thought to check his birth certificate. I can only hope the IRS will be as lax with my tax return.
Which, by the way, was signed with a pen that did not have flowers attached to it. Actually, my return was filed electronically, but I signed the paper authorizing my tax preparer (who is a woman) to file electronically with a deflowered pen.
She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.
I realize we’re getting into some potential stereotypes here, but I don’t spit (unless, of course, a bug flies into my mouth). I drink wine, not beer. I like poetry. I have always had as many “girlfriends” (in the friend sense) as guy friends.
What’s more, I truly believe that women are not only equal, but often superior to men. While I religiously abide by my brother the psychologist’s philosophy that “women are crazy, men are stupid,” I think women are more sensitive and less impulsive than men as a general rule – and that serves them well in the arena of life.
They also tend to be more principled and to have infinitely higher standards than men. Which can be really frustrating to us guys who tend to follow the shortest line between two points and damn whoever or whatever gets in our way.
Having said that, I have an issue with a practice that seems to be gaining ground here in the Rim Country, and, I would surmise, throughout the free world. It is a practice perpetrated by women that puts men at a clear disadvantage. It is a practice, frankly, that discriminates against we members of the unfairer sex.
I refer, of course, to chick pens. These are seemingly normal ballpoint pens that have been adorned with some kind of fake flower.
When I go to my doctor’s office (who, incidentally, is a guy, but his staff is all female), I am handed a chick pen to fill out paperwork. When I go to my bank (which is overrun by females), I am handed a chick pen to sign my name to documents.
Now one could argue that a chick pen works just as well as a regular pen. I would argue right back that putting a plastic flower on the end of a pen messes up its aerodynamics.
Using the same logic I employ in arguing against sweetened iced tea, I propose that if god intended our ballpoint pens to have fake flowers affixed to them, he would have done so when he created said pens in the first place (on the sixth day, I believe).
In addition, a pen topped with fake flowers has to be a germ magnet. Think of all those extra surfaces where evil terrorist cooties can lurk.
But my primary objection to being asked to use a pen with a fake flower on it is that it offends my manhood. As sure as baseballs are guy things, flowers are girl things. I would never attach a baseball, fake or otherwise, to the end of a ballpoint pen and ask a lady to use it.
I suspect if more people who worked in doctors offices and banks were guys, we wouldn’t have this problem. Because guys, following the straightest line between two points would not take the time or trouble to screw around with the basic ballpoint pen. As Shakespeare said, “It is what it is.” Or did he say, “To be or not to be.”
But if man did decide to defeminize the ballpoint pen, how would women like to be handed a pen that had a wrench attached to it. Or a tire pressure gauge. Or maybe the rattler from a rattlesnake.
In an enlightened era when a black man can be elected president, when communism and democracy can peacefully coexist on the same planet, when Payson’s waterless urinals have rendered the great toilet seat controversy meaningless, the flowery ball point pen is an anachronism. It is a throwback to the Dark Ages, to the segregated South of the 1950s, to a time when women walked a respectful step behind their men.
I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I’m not going to take it anymore. I am going to picket and protest and sit anywhere on the bus I like. I invite you to join me.
We can form one of those tea parties. To be politically correct, let’s call it the Green Tea Party.
Ultimately, we will probably have to march on Washington D.C. and holler racial epithets at black congressmen and gay epithets at Rep. Barney Frank and call people who voted for the health care bill “baby killers.”
Of course, this is all Obama’s fault. I honestly don’t remember any flower pens before he became president. They’re not change I can believe in.
You’d think in the greatest nation on earth somebody would have thought to check his birth certificate. I can only hope the IRS will be as lax with my tax return.
Which, by the way, was signed with a pen that did not have flowers attached to it. Actually, my return was filed electronically, but I signed the paper authorizing my tax preparer (who is a woman) to file electronically with a deflowered pen.
She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.
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