Ye olde Dungeons and Dragons

In which I talk about a bunch of games that are not, in fact, Dungeons and Dragons, but are only grouped with Dungeons and Dragons for the Rubes. 

So I've been running for my friends (you can hear them on the Podcasts) a bunch of Rogue Trader games over the last year, about once a week.  This is Warhammer 40k, of course, the idea that the players are the officers of a napoleonic space ship cruising, well, space for fun and profit. 

It has been an unholy mess.  Don't get me wrong, I've loved the setting since it was just a crude sci fi expansion of Warhammer Fantasy, though I find my interest in it has waned over the last decade, peaking sometime around 1999-2000 or so, and slowly dropping ever since.  No small part of the issue is simply how BAD the intellectual property has been managed.

Now, if Citadel/Games Workshop were some small 'fly by night' company operating out of some dudes garage, I could forgive them for many of their many problems. You know: Releasing a new edition when only half the army books have been released. Not releasing new versions of core army books (codex for the rubes...) until three or four new editions, going to cheaper plastic models and doubling the price over the old lead (white metal, a lead free version of pewter, actually) models, or more and other general fuckwittedness are just some of the problems.  

Look: you employ a small army of writers and designers, you are mostly recycling (or were) models that were designed and molded over a decade ago. You have NO excuse not to put out codices (the plural of codex, natch) fast enough to get them all out the same year as a new edition. Doubly so, since at least HALF of any given codex is recycled fluff text from the last release!! 

And don't give me that bullshit about 'game balance'. Not only is 40k among the worst ever tabletop games for balance (Lessee::: Broken unkillable/ghosting Necrons, Stompy bug armies... four editions of Tyranids that were nigh well unbeatable by any normal army.... then the Demon-bomb army, and greater demons that can win most battles single handedly (taking out six to eight times their point value if they do!)... yeah, you guys are really worried about balance, mate), but if you haven't 'balanced' the core armies before you've released the new edition, well maybe you aren't ready to actually release the new edition, are you? 

Now, Privateer Press, at least when it comes to the RPG version of Iron Kingdoms is damn near as bad, releasing a single fucking book about once a year. Ironically, since their war-game gets damn near a whole new edition in the same time frame, this means by the time IKRPG gets its third book, the first two books may well be rendered obsolete from a setting standpoint.  Yet, why? I could easily produce a single book of the IKRPG, to their standard of page count and quality in a single year... working alone and subcontracting art.  Privateer Press lists some sixty people in the credits of their own books, meaning any given person is either a fucking leech on the corporate teat, or is responsible for approximately five pages of content. 

And its not like they are making up huge mounds of shit, either. Most of the books are drawing extremely heavily on existing content, and the 'careers' are damn near boilerplated. 

But back to Rogue Trader and why it was a fucking nightmare to run. 

Well, from a basic setting standpoint the game sort of contradicts the setting. See, Warhammer 40k operates under a sort of 'great man of history' setting assumption.  Titans stride forth on mighty battlefields, accomplishing all sorts of shit, and attracting followers in vast numbers by sheer dint of their badassness.  I mean, if you are inherently bad-ass enough, eventually an army will form around you, as if by magic, and wage war on your behalf.  

This is hard coded into every bit of game fiction.  Assassins have to be selected by destructive weeding out of thousands of potential applicant/children, then trained their entire lives, given nearly entire body makeovers using superhuman and nearly lost technologies in genetic modifications and cyberware, and unique equipment held as almost holy relics from the lost golden age... just to be able to do their jobs, that's how bad ass every person of interest is in the setting. Some random, dissipated noble lord, with a thousand years of inbreeding and inheritance decides to cede from the Imperium?  As pathetic a specimen as he sounds, you can damn well bet he can eat entire regiments of infantry and shit the bones like artillery shells.  Anything less than a demigod level killing machine is doomed to failure if you send them to do the job. 

Except, in Rogue Trader, the captain of the ship is insanely fragile and nearly useless when not at the helm of the ship... which makes running the game an exercise in frustration or reduces everything to ship to ship combat. In fact, the more disposable anonymous you are the more bad ass you are, apparently, allowed to be. 

That's a minor beef, however.  I could simply chose to make the ship captain a Non-player character who never leaves the ship (Picard, calling Picard!), and let everyone play 'cool characters'... sure. 

But then we're dealing with the system. See, RT is the second in a series, and its pretty obvious that Fantasy Flight (The publisher of the RPG) and the Black Library (the arm of Game's Workshop responsible for non war-game IP), are still working out kinks in the system, so much so that by Only War the games start looking seriously non-compatible. 

Only, they aren't really tinkering at all with the fundamental game play. No, at best they tinker on the margins of that, preferring to spend all their energy on character progression.  Sigh.  Progression is mostly fine, if you accept the premise of 'class' based leveling (or if you don't, as of Only War). 

No, the real problem is that roughly three quarters of the combat rules are in the Talents chapter of character building.  You can't evaluate a bad guy until you've memorized three hundred fucking Talents so you know exactly what he can and can't do in a fight!  For players it is nearly as bad. 

Then there is the oddity of combat itself. I mean, reduced to its simplest elements it is fairly fine, though it really does favor specialized characters.  However, some weapons can prove nearly useless in combat (lasguns, which we found almost never wounded even the comparatively fragile space elves!), while others are so lethal that if you use them against even heavily armored player characters you are pretty much asking to reset the campaign (oh... rocket launchers, plasma guns... that sort of thing...). 

Let just say it was turgid but still managed to be like playing catch with a live grenade and leave it at that, the worst of all worlds. 

But it was, ironically enough, starships that killed the game. Oh... not too much the ships (though I could rant on them long enough...), but warp travel.  The core book is reasonably fine, in that it more or less glosses over everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING... except ship to ship combat (which... ugh... though STILL better than watching your players struggle to kill one nameless, unimportant space elf because...reasons.)  No, my mistake was using the Navis Primer rules for warp travel. Things were fine when the trips were short-ish, though the lack of a player character navigator meant the ship was nearly constantly lost in space due to really pathetic crew rating rules.  It was the first reasonably long trip that killed it for us. Something like twenty or thirty dice rolls later, and an hour into the evening they were roughly half done with the trip, several areas of the ship were uninhabitable due to 'space gribbly infestations', a warp beast was stalking the halls, and the entire crew was suffering delusions of mutation... sigh.  This was, for the record, with the benefits of a warps bane hull (making them much less likely to suffer awkward results), and a 'fast' ship engine, reducing the total number of rolls per trip to about sixty percent. 

Even just waving my hands and saying they arrived with 20 percent of the crew lost wasn't enough to recapture the 'magic' of game. We'd had enough.   

I might say the issue is tables.  The game is full of tables, but they are all small, and frequently refer to other small tables. Some people swear by random tables. I'm not really one of them, but if you're gonna do random tables, you have to put a substantial amount of work into them. Splitting everything into smaller tables just makes for shitty results and tons more time spent rolling and flipping pages. Better one big table, really. 

So we're gonna try traveller for a bit.  I've been given fair warning that my players don't want to get bogged down in ship logistics, which kinda makes me sad, because, well.... Traveller, but there you have it.   Still, for all the books I have, I know this much: There is no bog in Traveller nearly so boggy as ANYTHING in Rogue Trader. 

Recognition

So.

Several times in the last year or so people have linked to an image of Zooey Deschanel at some awards show with her trademark bangs swept aside (for once), almost universally as this amazingly trick question quiz of 'do you recognize her?'

Maybe you've seen it, maybe you haven't.  

Personally? 

I think its a shit photograph. Even after you reveal that its ms. Deschanel, you really can't see it... because its a shit photograph.  On the other hand it does say something about our culture that we really can't seem to recognize people once they strip off their 'uniform'.  I mean, are we really so incapable of basic recognition that we need fucking name tapes to know who's who?

Not me, man. 

See, I discovered rather late in life that I was more than a little nearsighted. Legally I can't drive without glasses on, which is hugely amusing to me since I didn't start actually wearing glasses until I was in my twenties, long after I had gotten my driver's license.  Anyway, as a result of my "Near Blindness" I learned to recognize people from a distance by the way they walk, so much so that I could tell you the gender of the person wearing a school mascot suit after only seconds of observation, and if I actually KNEW the person I would probably be able to tell you who it was despite almost any normally identifiable characteristics. 

Well, a decade and a half since I started wearing glasses I've gotten a little less keen on subtle hints of posture and walk (though I can still spot a tranny from a mile away, literally), but I've gotten really keen on smaller, subtle indicators of 'who'.  

See: i've really only seen Zooey Deschanel in two things: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and that crappy/interesting Wizard of Oz movie on Scify (where I liked the wicked witch a lot more...).  Now, these days we are inundated by her image thanks to that New Girl show (which, from what I know of it, was meant as a vehicle for Her Specificially, and has since morphed into a true ensemble show, possibly driving a nail in the coffin of the idea that Ms. Deschanel is particularly engaging as an actress, instead of merely being very pretty...), but a few years back, before the New Girl thing, I happened to catch an episode of Bones, mostly because I have a totally heterosexual man-love for David Boreneaz, or however you spell his name.   The show failed to properly capture my viewership in the long run, proving my man love was for Joss Whedon instead, which just shows how little taste I have in men. 

The point isn't my latent homosexuality, or lack thereof, but that within ten minutes of watching the show I realized that the female lead was, in fact, Zooey Deschanel's sister.   This, despite having no real interest in Zooey at all.  The only reason it took that long is that I had to verify my early suspicion against Hollywood's remarkably tendency to find a half dozen nearly identical actresses to shove in our face all at once in any given celebrity cycle.   I could reference here that as Thandie Newton got more and more attention, Zoe Saldana showed up to compete for the 'not quite white, skinny girl' crown... but I don't want to make a post about it, so you'll just have to pretend I did. 

Now, Emily Deschanel doesn't, to my knowledge, wear her sister's trademark bangs, and to be honest the closest resemblance I saw was in the eyes, not so much in the shape of their face or their relative acting chops, which sort of refutes the idea that I need Zooey's bangs to recognize her.

For you, however? Well, you tell me, imaginary reader.

However, to spare you the embarrassment, should you fail the photo 'test', I think it indicates far more how a crap, overexposed photograph can reduce anyone... no matter how famous... into a vaguely human manikin than it does for Ms Deschanel's bangs. 

Kiev

Yesterday I suborned my regularly scheduled posts with a heartfelt, if somewhat narcissistic, post on the Ukraine.  Today I continue the trend, because I care about you, my imaginary readers. 

Obviously I am not on a plain to eastern Europe right now, though perhaps less obviously, I am not in an airport waiting for the flight either.  I feel I should be, but perhaps my lack of belief in God means I just can't abandon the wreckage of my daily life to go based on impulse and feeling... 

Since you only exist in my mind, dear readers, I chose to imagine you listened to the podcasts we originally started with, and thus have heard Burke speak, the one podcaster who is deeply religious and deeply involved with his church (Methodists, which is funny if you recall Blazing Saddles like I do...). So, while we disagree about the existence of God, he is a fine friend to call on when you are troubled by matters that extend beyond mere intellect. Call them spiritual, for that is as accurate a word as any. 

So I called upon Burke, not to talk me out of going, or into going, but because I needed, perhaps still need, spiritual advice. Like all men I needed, in that moment, someone to talk to. 

So here we are. I am still not convinced that staying here, following the roller coaster news reports, is the right choice, but I am at least convinced now that going is not necessarily the right choice either, which I suppose is progress of a sort. 

You see: It isn't so much that I care about the outcome of the protests, per se. It isn't that I have objective knowledge that one side is right or wrong... though unlike Vox Day, I find myself singularly untroubled by the fact that the protesters are armed and have reputedly taken 'hostages' from among the riot cops. 

My reason, perhaps my sole reason, of interest is that the people of Kiev, the protestors, are doing what Americans are content not to do.  As I explained yesterday, we are far more likely to see mass protests over the price of an iPad than the continuing failures of our self-appointed Philosopher-Kings in DC.  People protest out of envy and spite, not because the police are shooting random people in the streets.  

Mind you: I find this worse than what is going on in Kiev. The riot police there are shooting protestors, they are fighting according to sides. One can avoid the violence quite easily by simply choosing to, well, avoid it.  Here in the states, however, you are far more likely to be shot by accident by the cops simply because some asshole read an address wrong, out of malice and personal animosity, or simple incompetence. 

How the fuck do you avoid that?  The police have become lightning strikes, impersonal and deadly and almost entirely unpredictable, and just as unstoppable.

But they are just men, and unlike lightning they can, and should be held accountable for their actions. We simply chose to turn a blind eye and ignore it, however.

So that is why I care about the Ukraine all of a sudden. 

I care because THEY care, and you do not.   I am tired of waiting for Americans to wake up, tired of hoping that we will one day realize that while there is no boot physically grinding your face in the dirt, the boot is there and it is making you miserable in a thousand tiny ways.  Can't get a good job? Thank the government regulations that keeps employment low. Can't afford a doctor? Thank government regulations that mandate your insurance cover things you have no interest in, like gender assignment surgery.  Lost your mother to icy roads in New Jersey (surely an act of God!, not government!), thank the rules that have held up 40 thousand tons of road salt in Maine, a mere few hours drive away.  

It isn't my point that government is always bad (well.. it is always bad, hence the term 'necessary evil'...), but that you simply don't care to trace by the source of whatever your woes are to continuing government malfeasance and corruption, and I am tired of waiting for you. I am tired of raging against the dying of the light, but I do it anyway. 

I don't want to rage, I want to fight. 

I want to stand with people who care rather than stand uselessly alone because no one else does. 

Ukraine

It seems odd to me, in the midst of all the other shit going on in the world, that I somehow desperately wish I could do something, anything really, to help the protestors in the Ukraine.

I mean: Really, the only reason I would normally post on here about the Ukraine would be to talk about how smokingly hot and, well, feminine,  Ukrainian women tend to be, compared to the obnoxious and unattractive wandering shoggoths that seem to dominate the American landscape.

But no. I'm talking local politics. I'm talking real protestors, protesting real issues (unlike our homegrown morons in the Occupy movement, say...), and taking real beatdowns for their pains... again, unlike our Occupy movement, which basically was like some sort of urban jamboree. 

Why? Why would I go to a place that is currently miserably cold where I'm likely to catch a bullet in the chest for my troubles, for a country that almost literally only means 'porn' to me? 

I think in some small part it is because they are doing what we are not. They are standing up for freedom, for rights being denied. They are fighting for a better tomorrow instead of cheaper iPads and  the absolution from willfully gained debts.  Because even if their struggle is currently futile, even if this protest is doomed, I have hope for them that I don't really feel for America most days. 

Of course, it could be something else. The cynic in me tells me that I only wish to go because I stand amidst ruin at home. There is nothing here for me, no real life, no real future. I can, in the immortal words of Captain Capitalism 'enjoy the decline' and not much else.  I should be preparing my forty-five calibre retirement plan, to steal another turn of phrase from him.  Its easy then to throw myself into someone else's doomed cause, to throw away my failures rather than fight to overcome them and claim it is good work, rather than simply giving up. 

It could be a martyr complex, to put myself into danger once more with cameras running, so that maybe I'll at last have a chance to make my eternal suffering (life, for the slow kids) mean something. The easy immortality, requiring no work but only the willingness to suffer dramatically.  I can do that. Anyone can do that, really.  It requires no great talent to suffer. 

What I do know is this: Twenty years ago I would have happily thrown away everything to go, to stand there, but twenty years ago I wouldn't have cared enough to notice.  Am I not impulsive enough anymore?  Am I afraid?  Is it wisdom or cowardice to stay here, safe if not particularly comfortable? Is it courage or vanity to go? 

Call it the curse of living the life of the mind. I cannot let my instincts go unexamined, cannot let my desires go unchecked for right or wrong.  

Right now my heart screams at me to go, chanting with all the dedication of an overwrought fan seeing their favorite band live for the first time, and yet here I am... typing away instead. 

I am here, not there.  

I am wise and foolish, brave and cowardly, I am static.

And so I do nothing but stroke my own ego, making their plight my own by proxy.  

And if I go, do I not suggest that my mere presence may turn aside the tide of history? That being an American in Kiev would somehow... matter? 

Probity Redux

In the Law they express two concepts, though in Latin to keep the rubes like me out, that can be summed up in 'The Guilty Act' and 'The Guilty Mind'.  In traditional formulations, both have to be present for a criminal act to have been committed.

Example: You shove your friend and he stumbles into traffic, is hit by a car, and dies horribly. 

The Guilty Act is that you killed your friend. There is no real debate, in this case, that you did so.

The Guilty Mind is your intent. If you wanted your friend to die horribly, it is murder. If you were just playing around and accidentally killed him it is not.  Of course, since we like putting people in jail, we came up with Negligent Homicide, and everyone except you and your dead friend, is happy. 

Make sense so far? 

When you are forced to denounce yourself for some trivial sin you are admitting to guilt, the Guilty Mind, you did not possess.  Let us review it in the sense of our story from the last post:

The young man's Act was to post a joke .Gif of President Obama kicking a door. His Mind was 'Midterm's suck, even the president agrees'.  Not really a thought crime, yes?  Surely, President Obama, a former professor (who taught no classes?) would not actually agree with that sentiment, but that is neither here nor there. 

However, despite any racial animus to his act, he was forced to apologize for committing a racist act, taking on the mantle of a Guilty Mind, making his .Gif, post facto (another legal concept, in Latin), a Crime of Racism. 

Why harp on this? 

Well, first to assuage my own mind that, in his shoes I would never have allowed myself to be tarred with the crime I hadn't actually committed.  My history shows quite the opposite: I'm quite skilled at evading guilt for crimes I DID commit, sadly, so I can't see pleading to a greater charge as an option I'd take. 

I've got too many skeletons to go around getting in trouble for shit I didn't actually do, in other words. 

Second I want you, any of you, to have that thought in your minds if you even find yourself in his shoes... without my own 'armor of sin' protecting you.  He may have bought himself a few moments of peace, even the ability to remain in school, officially... but he is now forever more 'That Racist Bastard' to all the people who believe in thought crimes.  I doubt he has honestly preserved his academic career in any meaningful sense.  Pleading guilty to "Lesser" charges may seem the right choice, but it means you'll never be free of the guilt in the public eye.  It is a devil's bargain, and we all know how those turn out. 

In this I disagree with many in the Men's Rights movement, from Price at the Spearhead to the guys at a Voice for Men. They sympathize with men who chose not to sacrifice years of their life for honor and dignity, who plead to lesser charges in return for clemency.  I have no sympathy for cowards and spineless men.  Pity, certainly, but not sympathy.  

And let me explain why: Every man who takes the cowards path makes it harder for the rest of us.  I used to jump out of planes, static line jumps. It was never your mistake that would hurt you, would kill you, but the mistake of the man in front of you.  His weak exit, his moment of fear at the open door and the empty sky, meant his static line was low on the door and would catch you by the arm (if you were lucky) or the neck (if you were not).  His failure was your pain, and your failure was the pain of the man behind you. 

It is the same here. Every single man who pleads to sexual assault to avoid a rape conviction instead of fighting a false accusation merely makes it that much easier for the next man to be charged. Every man who admits to racism in thought and deed when there was none, makes it harder for the next man to stand on his dignity. Every.Single.Man who refuses to fight domestic violence charges when it was his wife throwing the punches, as loudly and aggressively as possible, just so the legal problems will go away makes the next man so charged his fault. 

There is a reason more vigorous societies hated cowards.  The coward always buys his life at the cost of the men around him. Always.  He has blood on his hands. The blood of better men, worthier men, and the blood of women who pay the price for his failures.

We have forgotten that, in our race towards eternal childhood.  We have forgotten that as we try to turn men into women. Bravery is not a feminine virtue, though we laud those women who possess it, so we reject it as too macho.  We fear if we celebrate bravery we encourage men to prove theirs through violence. 

And since we have forgotten the price of Cowardice, it is not enough to merely mention it, to mock it... I must explain. 

Defend your honor as if it were your life.

No.

Defend your honor as if it were more important to you than life, for it is. 

Probity, Lies and Politics

When I mentioned probity in my last post I didn't expect to find a reason to follow up a mere hour or so after I mentioned it.  Courtesy Ace of Spades.

What is Probity?  The word means nothing more than having strong principles, but the concept is somewhat deeper than that. Probity implies a strong sense of self, of empowerment. Someone who has 'probity' is in control of themselves, is a moral, principled actor.

So what does this have to do with the post I put up, and my reference in the earlier post?

Well, several years ago I stumbled across a description of how communist meetings tended to go. People were accused of 'Thought Crimes' and had to stand up and denounce themselves, then others were invited to stand up and denounce their own thought crimes to the group. Failure to denounce oneself, even to the point of having to lie and make up things to denounce, was cause for the entire group to turn on the offending party (who, ironically, was the only person NOT claiming to have offended...), putting huge amounts of peer pressure on them to force the offender to conform.

The actual description was tying this behavior to various progressive groups, including Feminism and so forth, which in and of itself was fascinating and insightful. So much so that I regret that I didn't bother to keep the link to share with you all.

However, the real insight for me wasn't the way modern progressive groups were acting almost exactly like their communist fore bearers did, but WHY communists and progressives did this.

And the word they used was Probity.

See: When you are forced to lie about yourself, even in small ways, you lose your sense of Probity, your sense of being a principled actor. By forcing you to lie, constantly, you lose your sense of morality. You conform to the group ideals, loosing your own in the process. It is, essentially, a form of brainwashing.

Now look at that story again.  The young man's sin, such as it was, is not that he was a racist asshole but that he was insensitive to his own potential racism.

Which is, of course, a lie.

His true sin was that he...

No. He didn't sin. He made a joke about midterms. We can even argue that his own act was sort of the opposite of racist. He didn't even THINK about the color of a man's skin, just the content of his character and the actions that demonstrated the same.  Martin Luther King should be proud of this young man, and what he says about the youth of today.

For this he was forced to denounce himself. The actual 'sin' he committed is irrelevant, even to those who persecuted him. He is an object lesson, he is Winston.  His own sense of Probity has been irreparably damaged by his forced confession, and everyone who witnessed his public shaming has likewise seen the consequences of being a white man in today's society, of insufficient piety for the platitudes of the era and the dignity of the powerful.

Think on that. By simply showing an image of a very public act he is accused of shaming the actor, he is accused of promoting a false idea of black males (young black males at that, despite the fact that Obama is, what, fifty?).

It is a fact, a matter of public record, that Obama kicked a door.  Any harm to Obama's reputation, any shame to 'young' black males as a result is Obama's fault. HE acted.*

But merely repeating that image, in a humorous context that had nothing to do with shaming or mocking Obama is still viewed as an act of disrespect that must be punished.

And since this young man was in their power, a student at a school, pursuing a degree, they have the power to punish him, to shame him, to make an example of him.

Now that puts me in an awkward position. I am, in fact, going to school. I am, purportedly, in their power as well.  Do I duck my head and pretend to conform? Do I harm my own Probity by avoiding actions that might lead me to being made an example of?

Well, I suppose I do.  On the other hand, I have made it this far in life without a degree, and god only knows I could use a little publicity at this point, so I can say that were I in his shoes I would defend myself rigorously, no matter the cost.

What, exactly, have I to lose?

But I am old and tired and sick of it all. Its not my future I concern myself with, but the failures of my past.  Were I a young man I might have done as he did, and never regretted the denouncement, but the original, harmless, innocent act.











*Obama did not kick the door.

The Last Boyscout

"The Sky is blue, water is wet, women lie."

So says Bruce Willis's character in our title movie.  He repeats this several times, as a leitmotif, in fact dampening down the last portion at the end of the movie to reveal he is just a little less bitter, in a not quite subtle form of character development.

Of course, he can get away with that, since it was the early nineties, it was Bruce Fucking Willis, and it was just one sad-sack loser of a character who has his eyes opened to the 'truth' by the end of the film.

Because we, as a people, can no longer tell truths if they go against the grain. Telling unwelcome truths is never easy, and not always wise, but I fear we've gone way too far.   There is a long post brewing about progressives, socialism and the deliberate destruction of probity, forcing us to lie about ourselves in a thousand little ways simply to get by... but that is a topic for another day. 

I am going to risk the wrath of a million easily offended women by focusing on the fact that, yes, women lie. 

I don't mean they lie like men lie, for simple gains or to avoid unpleasant consequences. Of course they do that. We can say there are 'human lies' and 'women's lies', two specific categories of lies that exist side by side. No 'men's lies', though of course there are some lies in the 'human' category that men tell 'yeah baby, you the only one for me' seems like a man specific lie, doesn't it?   Well, actually: women tell those lies too, when appropriate. 

Women lie in a way that is alien to men, in a way we often cannot fathom, and with a frequency that would be astounding if anyone ever called them on it. 

This is where our eponymous boy scout get it wrong.  The lies that Bruce Willis's character is thinking about goes back to his wife cheating on him. 

That is hardly specific to women... though science has shown us women do in fact cheat far more readily and often than men do, despite a decade plus of concentrated, deliberate effort to convince society that men were the dogs.  Men will lie about cheating, they are just less effective at it... something to do with the fact that women will happily convince their girlfriends to help them cover for an affair, while men's friend just sort of haphazardly wing it... unless they think they can score with the wronged woman!

This, despite the fact that women are notoriously bitchy and backstabbing towards one another. 

So what sort of lies am I talking about? 

Mostly, for this post, I'm talking about Identity Lies.  Women lie about who they are constantly, on a fundamental level. They lie to themselves on a scale that boggles the mind.  While almost any man who has had experience with women can tell you that women give the worst dating advice, it has been shown by experts that most official dating advice isn't just wrong, it is literally the polar opposite of the truth! If a woman tells you to bring flowers, skip them. If she tells you don't call her a bitch, do so!

I exaggerate slightly, to save words. 

Women tell men they want nice guys, en masse they say this, and everyone who has ever tried to be the 'nice guy' has learned that women don't want nice guys... they want jerks and assholes... bad boys who will cheat on them, won't call them, and might not even remember their names. 

Remember: Empirical man.  If you doubt me, and you've been a lonely nice guy for a while, just go try it. Go find some women you don't know (or heck, even some you do!), and just be an asshole. Call them bitches, ignore them, treat them like a completely disposable, interchangeable fuck-hole you could care less about. If I'm right you'll make more progress than candies and flowers and praise ever got you. If I'm wrong, you can go back to being the chump in the friend zone.   

And its not like I'm not talking from experience. I was in long term relationship because I ordered a girl I barely knew into my car so we could go to my house and fuck.  She claimed later that she had no idea what my intention was, but she stuck around for a decade, gave me threesomes and let me sleep with other women simply because I demanded what I wanted from her.  

So I know it works. 

But that's just one facet, not even a big one.  So women don't know how to give dating advice, even though they claim to be experts on emotional connections, empathy, and...well... women? So what? 

Well, they also lie to themselves about their ability to fight like a man, their ability to live in a man's world, to work and fuck like a man... but that might not be their fault. Feminism has lied to them for fifty years about these things, and western civilization has coddled and protected them from the consequences of these lies for far longer.  Men have created a civilization where women are mostly safe at night, where... at one time... criminals avoided robbing women in favor of the riskier attacks on men.  Oh, sure, there were still rapists, who weren't about to go for a big, hairy man in favor of a soft, pretty woman, but rapists were the lowest of the low for a long time. But that's changing, all of it is changing, and as Feminism at last sees all of its goals achieved on a scale its founders might have never imagined (even, perhaps, been disgusted by. For all her faults Betty Friedian opposed NOW's agenda and was kicked off the board...), and the result is that men are losing their respect for women. Criminals are finding them easier, often richer, targets than men and rapists have been dethroned by pedophiles in the pantheon of evil, and that is Feminisms fault. After all, dirty uncles have always been with us. 

But Feminism used 'The Children' as a weapon for decades, and society agreed that children were more precious than women. The enshrining in Feminist Canon for the institution of false rape accusations, and the increasingly abusive use of police to charge any man with domestic violence if he dared not bow to his wife or girlfriend under 'domestic abuse' law has caused many men to think twice about charges of rape, about rapists.  Abuse of their rhetorical weapons has begun to backfire.

But wait, there's more!

Anna Paquin is happily married to her male costar from True Blood, and to my knowledge has NEVER been seen out with a woman in public in any reasonably romantic way, even by innuendo and rumor, despite having been in the public eye since she was a mere girl. Yet, she proclaims proudly her bisexuality. 

Amber Heard was an out and proud 'pretty lesbian starlet' up until Johnny Depp needed new arm-candy. 

That's two famous cases, but I know many, many others. Women proclaim proudly their bisexuality, their gayness, constantly, but hook up exclusively with men, or at best carry girlfriends until the next suitable man comes along.  My LTR, for our entire relationship, talked about how she was bi. But, you see, I had sex with her and other women, and I know better.  She would barely touch another woman during sex, she was all about the dick, as were her 'bi girlfriends' whom we shared our bed. 

We could talk about female fluid sexuality, of course, and I won't deny that there are lesbians out there, real ones, not the straight girls doing girl-girl porn because its is somehow less sleazy than taking a cock on camera, and I won't even mention (hah!!!) college girls grinding on their girlfriends in the club. 

Women lie about their own identities. Bisexuality is 'in'. Gays are getting lots of attention and women want a part of that.  They believe their lies. I have to believe that they do, the alternative is that half the human population is sociopathic. 

Bisexuality is merely the current trend, the big one that seems to come from the lips of every single woman who doesn't have a pressing reason to avoid it (christians, say!), but I've seen women lie about being vegetarians. Lie, you see, because for all they proclaim it they will guiltily admit to 'cheating'.

Look, if you avoid meat for ten years and suddenly have some bacon out of long suppressed longing, that's fine. That's a lapse, a breakdown of will. I have to wonder about someone who has to fight the urges to eat meat for ten years, but that's another story.

But if you are buying bacon at the grocery store, keeping it in your fridge...thats not a lapse. You're a damn liar, a carnivore proclaiming your 'pure and innocent' vegetarianism for societal praise. 

And I just don't see men doing this. 

Not anywhere near the industrial scale that women do.  In fact, when a man lies about himself for praise, we call him on it, call him a fraud and a con artist and any number of invective phrases. Depending on his lies, we may even arrest him.

Not that I'm saying we arrest Anna Paquin for lying about her bisexuality... or potentially lying. I mean, I haven't had sexual relations with her recently, so maybe good old vampire Bill enjoyed his wife and her maid of honor on their honeymoon.

Notice, in my list of bi-lies, I left off X-tina. Why? Because X-tina actually IS sleeping with girls and boys. 

So: Not a liar.  In fact, she got served with divorce papers by her husband (the FOOL!!!!) because X-tina loves the pink a little too much. 

I also left of Lady Gaga because I can't be assed to research her, and I've never heard of her dating ANYONE... ever.  I will note, in passing, that pretty much all of her videos have her dancing around with dudes. Gay dudes, mostly, but still. 

Katy Perry? She just claimed she kissed a girl, and liked it.  Not the same as claiming she regularly visits the isle of sappho.  Hey, who hasn't kissed a girl and liked it?  Girls are eminently kissable, I think we can all agree. 

Of course, I think we'll be seeing more men lying about being gay (or queer, which I increasingly realize means 'womanly'... as all women seem to be queer or pro-queer when you listen to them) as we increasingly set gay's up as some sort of super-minority.  As my previous posts on this remain mere drafts, I'll reference once again the 'gay-only' scandal of Eddie Izzard and the case of the mysteriously missing dress.   

Hey, going 'gay for pay' netted him millions of dollars, and he even went out of his way to stress his love of girls over boys!  Now that he is rich and famous, being not-gay means not scaring the mom and pop folks, thus more money!  

So: Is he really queer (Tranvestite) who dropped the dresses once it started hurting his prospects in Kansas? Or was he never really queer at all, but merely wore dresses and makeup to stand out from every other stand-up comic out there? 

Whatever the truth is, Eddie Izzard is merely a taste of what is to come for the gay community.  Bring on the quotas, I'll happily mark 'gay' on my next job application if it means hiring preferences. Prove I'm not!



Edit::: I can't believe I forgot the old (two decades at least) practice of men pretending to be gay to get laid.  Well, just imagine I wrote something witty and long winded about it and you'll be fine.

Real Edit: For some reason I had Pink listed instead of Christina Aguilera. I even knew I'd made the mistake, but forgot to correct it until now, months later. I denounce myself.